


Let the More Loving One be Me (Or: Aw, Crap)

by willowswhiten



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Family, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst and Humor, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:58:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowswhiten/pseuds/willowswhiten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Steven Rogers-Carter has just come back from Afghanistan, struggling with PTSD and memories that haunt him. When he's introduced to his adoptive mother's godson, engineer, mechanic and billionaire Tony Stark, there's a lot of yelling. Things are never entirely simple when two broken warriors realise exactly what they need to put themselves back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> this story has been bothering the back of my brain for a while. It's very roughly based off a mechanic AU (I think the concept was by Valtyr, who is my stony-writing hero), but mostly it's based on a random dream I had where all the Avengers were Peggy's adopted kids. The work is still in progress, but there's 30,000 words already written and I'll be uploading it whenever I get bored of my dissertation - if there's anything you want to see, let me know and you might get lucky...

_Go home_ , they told him. _Get some rest, soldier. You deserve it_.

            They didn’t give him any more orders. Not that he would’ve listened – he was done with following orders – but just one last clarification would’ve been nice. It would’ve been nice for someone to explain to him just what they meant by ‘home’.

            He had time to think about it on the flight, when insomnia kept him up past the point when the cabin lights went out and everyone else – even the overexcited little girl beside him who’d asked so many questions about his uniform – had drifted off to uncomfortable seating sleep.

            If he really had to start all over, there was only one place he could go. It seemed strange it had taken him so long to think of it, but then, it was a place for safety and love and he hadn’t had to think of things like that for a very long time.

            The plane landed at JFK and he grabbed his duffel, waited for the one other soldier on the plane to be ready. Only two of them were being invalided out, and when he looked at Dugan, it seemed completely unfair that he could be standing there on his own two feet with a psychological bullshit free-pass while Dugan had a stump where his left leg should be and a merry grin on his face.

            The wheelchair-ready minibus the marine corp had sent was waiting outside, and on the drive, it was just him and Dugan in companionable silence as they’d been a hundred times before.

            ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ the driver said, her voice cheerful and polite, ‘but where would you like me to take you?’

            ‘Brooklyn,’ Dugan answered for him, flashing him a smile. ‘Your pal gave me instructions, Cap. Ever something like this goes down, I make sure you go back to your gal, come hell or high water.’

            He stared at Dugan, every muscle so still and tense that he could feel his pulse in his neck.

            ‘He told you to do that?’

            ‘Yup, and as you know, that bastard scared the bejeesus out of me. Be bad luck to ignore a direct order from my superior.’ Dugan’s smile faltered a little, and then was plastered back on, brighter than ever.

            ‘You should come with me. She’d take good care of you, Dum-Dum.’

            ‘Don’t doubt it, Cap, but that’s not the plan. I’m going to the sort of hotel they send you to when they’ve got to say sorry for blasting your leg off, and my folks are coming up from Boston to see the sights with me. Give us some time to adjust, you know? You should come with us, we’re goin’ to be taking it slow, maybe two weeks. Gotta take my ma shopping.’

            He felt himself almost smile. Almost. As soon as his face started to resume that shape, his heart began to pound, and guilt overwhelmed him, panic rising up into his throat. Distantly, he heard Dugan telling him to breathe, to calm down.

            _Stupid orders. Don’t you think if I could, I already would’ve?_

            He had no right to smile – no right to breathe – when his friend was dead and cold. So cold.

            ‘Sergeant Dugan? Is he alright?’

            ‘Nope, sugar, he’s about as far from alright as you can get. He’ll calm down in a sec, though. He’s needed this vacation for a really long time. Maybe we can even persuade him it’s time to retire. Hear me, old man? Might be time to just settle down.’

            He managed to snort at that. It was a joke, in his company, calling him _old man_ when he’d not yet scraped thirty. Medal of valor after honorary mention after spectacular success had meant he’d been promoted faster than anyone could’ve anticipated. They called him a tactical genius, a credit to the service.

            None of it mattered, though, because in the end it hadn’t counted for jack and the one thing that had dragged him out to the desert was dead.

            Something he remembered flashed by the window and he straightened, suddenly aware that they were in Brooklyn Heights. The brownstone buildings looked so painfully familiar, sun low in the sky and hitting just the very top windows.

            Dugan must’ve told the driver something, because they stopped outside the most familiar one of all. It was the best-kept building on the block – hell, probably in the whole of Brooklyn – and had the most beautiful little garden in its tiny front plot. Roses and thyme. There was a bench, there, and a child’s plastic ball.

            He froze at that, at the reminder of children and childhoods, and then remembered. He’d met the new kid, the few times he’d been on home for leave. They wrote to each other, the rest of the time, some strange bond forming between them faster than anyone could’ve expected. Anyone but him, that is. He knew all about finding family and holding on to them tight.

            He waved to Dugan and watched the minivan pull away down the street. A few passersby stopped to stare at him; many more waved and yelled his name, forced him to raise a hand in acknowledgement, though he could barely remember most of them. His gal talked about him all the time, he knew. Their neighbors were always on the lookout for a tall guy in military digs. Half of them seemed under the impression he’d stranged Osama with his bare hands.

            He walked up the stairs and knocked on the big, brown door with its pattern of lilies.

            ‘She’s not home, son,’ came a thin, reedy voice from behind him, and when he turned, he was faced with the beaming smile of a skinny bespectacled man who was ninety if he was a day. ‘Let me look at you, _mein Junge_. So big and strong, now! I’ve seen photos, but you never come visit when you are home, so I don’t know if she uses computers to make you look bigger.’

            Despite himself, he found himself smiling, and there wasn’t a rush of guilt this time. ‘Dr Erskine,’ he said, and immediately found himself embraced by brittle arms and kissed soundly on both cheeks. ‘You’re pretty strong yourself, sir.’

            ‘I eat all of the Wheaties,’ Erskine confided, a bright light in his eyes. ‘Your brother, he brings me toaster pastries when he comes to visit. I am not sure why, but who am I to turn him away?’

            ‘You could try, but he tends to take things like that as a challenge,’ he agreed. ‘Dr Erskine, do you know where she’s gone?’

            ‘ _Ja, ja_ ,’ he said, bobbing his head. ‘She tells me, “Abraham, I know you are going to sit in the sun all day like a lazy old man, so if Hawk comes, tell him I am at the shop.”’ And I tell her I am writing my memoires, not lazing, and she laughs and gives me an apple danish. Why is everybody trying to make me fat?’

            ‘Hawk’s home?’

            ‘ _Ja_ , but he goes away for a few days. Should be back today, tomorrow. I don’t know. That boy makes me dizzy.’

            The Captain agreed, but he was too busy trying to process the information to get drawn into a conversation about Hawk.

            ‘What’s “the shop”?’

            Erskine smiled serenely and wandered to the bench, sat down in a beam of sun and gestured invitingly. He was a master of emotional manipulation, and even before the Captain had gone to war, it had been a rare treat to have some time to talk to him alone. He was always surrounded by people, and Erskine was fond enough of him that he wanted to catch up without having to tune out other people’s voices.

            ‘She had all of her father’s old cars brought out of storage. She wanted to get them fixed up, but she says “no one touches’ Daddy’s babies but me”, and she spends weeks trying to find autoshop that will teach her how to fix them. She says she needs new hobby. Finally, she gets phone call from her godson, complaining how she never comes to him and ask for help, and since then, she is always in his autoshop.’

            His head spun with trying to follow Erskine’s English, still stubbornly accented after decades of sitting on a porch in Brooklyn, and before that in Queens.

            ‘Wait. She has a godson?’

            ‘She says she argued with his papa, but the boy, he wants to know her again. You know her, Captain. Always a soft spot for lost children and broken things.’

            He did know, too well, and Erskine’s gently mocking use of his title when he’d known him since he weighed forty pounds soaking wet made him smile again, smaller and more sincere than anything he’d managed in the longest time.

            ‘There we are,’ Erskine said softly, ‘that’s what I was looking for. You are a good man, Captain. You will survive this thing. You have survived so much.’

            Half an hour of avoiding questions and chatting about his eligible single granddaughters – and one flamboyantly gay grandson - and Erskine finally jotted down the instructions on how to get to the autoshop. It was only a few stops on the subway, and soon he was standing in front of a converted sixties car dealership with the word _Stark_ in huge plastic letters above the opening to a working garage. The word, stylised into a logo, looked strangely familiar.

            He could see sparks flying and the whirring noise of working machinery. It was strangely calming to be somewhere where the danger was real, not just imagined paranoia clawing at the back of his mind. He found his way round the side of the building to a small but neat and alarmingly bubblegum-pink reception.

            The receptionist seemed a fan of the colourscheme, as she had her bare feet on the desk and was painting her toenails to match, snapping a massive blue bubble between dark red painted lips every few moments.

            She looked up at him standing awkwardly in front of her, still dressed in his desert combats and with his duffel over his shoulder. They stared at each other for a long moment, before she swung her feet off the desk, propped her chin on her hands and in a ridiculously low, husky voice said,

            ‘by all that is good and holy in this world, please say you’re a strip-o-gram.’

            ‘Um,’ he managed, already feeling a blush rise up his neck, ‘no? I’m here to see-‘

            ‘One minute, gorgeous.’ She slammed her elbow into what he assumed was an intercom and yelled, ‘Stark! Get in here, it’s your birthday.’

            The Captain had literally no idea how to cope with this, and so he decided discretion was the better part of valor and tried to stand at ease as the receptionist looked at him as if she’d like to eat him.

            ‘Keep blushing, soldier, and I might just have to taser you unconcious just to see if it goes all the way down.’

            He opened his mouth to try and recite whatever parts he could remember of the army’s sexual harassment policy, but before any words could force themselves past his lips the door to the garage slammed open and he was hit in the chest by a grease monkey.

            Instinct had him grabbing the guy by his shoulders and forcing him back to his feet. He was met by startled, warm brown eyes almost obscured by a frankly obscene amount of grease and dirt, with the sort of rings around them that suggested the guy had been wearing goggles until a second before.

            He looked down, and found that his prisoner was wearing socks. In a working garage, full of things that went bang, he was wearing reindeer socks and appeared to have tried to do a sock slide into the reception.

            He didn’t know how to deal with this, either, so he just held the guy up on his tiptoes by his shoulders and looked into those stupidly pretty eyes, contemplating his next move.

            ‘Darcy,’ the guy squeaked, making the Captain tense. ‘What the hell is happening?’

            ‘I can only assume this is some new kind of homoerotic holiday tradition no one told me about. Mazel tov.’

            ‘I am trying,’ the Captain ground out, ‘to find Miss Carter. Although what she’d be doing in this holding house for the criminally insane, I’m not sure.’

            The guy went very still in his grip and he looked down to find those brown eyes suddenly full of calculating intelligence.

            ‘I resent that comment, and furthermore, I…’ his voice trailed off, taking in the uniform. ‘Oh. You’re Stevie.’

            ‘Captain Steven Rogers-Carter,’ Steve clarified.

            ‘ _Stevie!’_ Steve had only a second to process the new voice before arms were thrown around his back and he was forced to drop his greasy prisoner, turn, and hold her close. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home? Stevie? Steven, what’s the matter?’

            She smelled like _Chanel_ and engine oil, like apples and cinnamon and _home_ and before he really knew what was happening, he was crying. Sobbing like the little kid she’d found and taken home with her, so many years ago.

            ‘He’s dead, Peggy. He’s dead and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.’

            ‘Peggy? Do you need me to-‘

            ‘It’s alright, Tony. He just needs a minute. Go back into the shop, I’ll introduce you two properly in just… two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

            Her voice. She was like Erskine, an immigrant who’d never lost the voice of the place she’d been born, and Peggy spoke like the Queen. Just hearing her crisp, no-nonsense vowels made him feel like he was ten years old again.

            She felt soft and brittle, tiny in his arms, when she’d always towered over him as a kid. He never could get used to seeing her as a little old lady and not the ferocious woman who’d taken him in.

            ‘I heard about Bucky. I was on his emergency contacts’ list. I’ve already dealt with all of his things, Steve. You don’t need to worry about anything.’ She pulled away, enough so she could look him over, the quick proprietary check of a mother. Her lipstick was a vivid red slash against her snow-white hair and skin. ‘You should’ve told me you were sick.’

            ‘Not sick, Peg. Crazy.’

            ‘Bollocks,’ she said sharply, lovingly. ‘You’re not well, and now you’re home to get better. I hope you don’t think it’ll be all sitting around doing your sketching with Dr Erskine, though. I’ll expect you to carry your load.’

            He laughed, and the sound was false, strange. ‘Sure thing, Peggy.’

            ‘Clint’s dropping our baby spider off here after school. They’re going to be so pleased to see you, love. Peter never stops asking after you. You’re his hero.’

            ‘I let him die. I let him go, Peggy.’

            ‘You did no such thing, and if I hear you talk like that again, I’ll remind you that you’re not too old to be grounded.’ Her fingers found the base of his skull, pulled him close so that his forehead rested against hers. ‘You are going to allow him the dignity of his death, and you are going to live twice as hard, for the both of you. Do you understand me, Steven?’

            ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He tucked his head against her shoulder. He had to almost double over to do it, but it was worth it, to feel her stroke the hair at the base of his neck, where it was growing out of the buzz cut. ‘I love you, Peggy. I’ve missed you so badly. Missed everyone.’

            ‘Well, now that you’re home, we’ll have a party to celebrate. I’ll get all my lost boys – and Tasha – back under one roof, and we’ll remember everything good. We’ll remember Bucky, and we’ll do a shot of Tasha’s vodka. We’ll drink to see him on his way.’ She paused, patted his back, and then yelled painfully close to Steve’s ear, ‘Anthony Edward Stark, didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s impolite to eavesdrop?’

            The door to the garage swung slowly open and the greasy man from before – Tony – slunk in, looking for all the world like a chastised toddler.

            Steve felt a sudden rush of sympathy. He knew all too well how Peggy could make grown men feel like little boys. He looked the other man over.

            He was wearing very expensive, very thoroughly destroyed jeans slung low on lean, strong hips. His white vest had long ago ceased to be white and its collar and arms drooped, revealing great expanses of tanned, scarred chest.

            Being a greasemonkey was, apparently, an excellent workout. The guy’s arms were ridiculous.

            As was the beard. Steve decided to add the beard to the long list of things that had happened in _Stark’s Autoshop_ he could neither understand nor accept.

            ‘Come on, Peggy, this is the most dramatic thing that’s happened here in, like, _ever._ ’ He edged closer, obviously keeping out of arms’ distance of Steve, who straightened up to his full height – considerably taller than the greasemonkey – and wiped the tears from his face quickly. ‘Are you going to introduce me to Tall, Blond and Murderous?’

            Bizarrely, Peggy chuckled. ‘Of course, though after all I’ve told you about him, I’m surprised you need any more information. Tony, this is my son, Steven. Stevie, I’d like you to meet my godson and good friend, Tony Stark. This is his autoshop – he’s helping me restore Daddy’s old Aston Martins.’

            It clicked, suddenly, and Steve knew where he’d seen that _Stark_ symbol before.

            ‘Another son? Just how many do you have, Peg?’

            Steve tensed, old instincts from his childhood rising up, and he knew Stark saw it. Let him see – Steve didn’t care. No on messed with his family. They’d fought too hard and come too far to have anyone try and mess with them.

            ‘Six,’ Peggy said pleasantly, ‘and a daughter, Natasha. You’ve only met Clint and Peter, so far. And now, of course, Steve. You will come tonight, won’t you, Tony? I’d love for you to meet everyone.’

            Steve watched him closely, and saw what he was looking for. He saw the way that when Tony’s gaze fell on Peggy, some of the tension left him, and his mouth quirked in an involuntary almost-smile.

            That was the correct and proper reaction to Peggy. If you didn’t love her, you were brain damaged. Some of Steve’s tension leaked out of him, and for the first time, he realised just how exhausted he was.

            ‘We’re adopted,’ Steve offered suddenly, and immediately all of Stark’s attention was on him again. Steve didn’t know if he’d ever seen anyone with such clever eyes. ‘Peggy had a friend in social services who asked her to foster me for a couple weeks, until they could find somewhere to put me. I was… difficult. They thought an ex-military fostermother would straighten me out.’

            ‘And how did that go?’ Tony asked, all false sincerity and batted eyelashes. ‘The whole… straightening process?’

            Steve glared at him and opened his mouth to say something else, only to be cut off by Peggy.

            ‘He calmed down, and I fell hopelessly in love with the little rapscallion,’ she said serenely. ‘They asked me to take in Clint, and the same thing happened. He begged me to foster his best friend, and I wound up with Natasha. No one else would take Bruce – he had a case file as big as Steve’s bicep – so they put him with me.’ She beamed at Steve and petted his arm, bulging from where he had it crossed defensively across his chest. Stark’s eyes followed the movement. ‘I thought I was done – I was in the process of adopting all four of them – and then I got the call about these brothers who were going to be deported if they couldn’t find a home.’

            ‘I haven’t heard a damned thing from Loki in over six months,’ Steve told her.

            ‘He’s been busy, love. Don’t take it personally, you know how he gets. Anyway, I met them – these beautiful, angry Norwegian teenagers full of hatred and resentment – and by the time they’d finished three cups of tea and eaten four boxes of toaster pastries they were calling me _Tante Peg_.’

            ‘We thought Thor and Loki would be the last ones.’

            ‘Thor and Loki? Really? Your kids are named after Norse Gods, Peg?’

            ‘Their dear departed parents were hippies, apparently,’ she said mildly, and began shepherding Steve and Tony back into the workshop. Tony, Steve noted, was still only wearing reindeer socks. The noses of the reindeers had little pompoms on them. ‘You’ve met Peter, Tony. You can see why I couldn’t just leave him. And with an empty house, it was getting lonely.’

            Steve snorted, and she raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow at him.

            ‘Come on, Peggy, you’ve never had an empty house since the day you took me in. Clint and Thor still live with you almost all the time, Tasha’s always there when she’s not busy performing, and I know for a fact that Bruce is home at least once a week to do laundry and get a proper meal.’

            Peggy beamed at Tony. ‘I wanted you to meet my Bruce, love. The two of you would get on like a house on fire – he’s got a PhD in nuclear physics and he’s training to be a doctor. Of course, all of my children are brilliant. They take after me, you see.’ She gestured to an almost completely gutted and ripped apart old Aston Martin, nudging Steve in the ribs. ‘Look, Stevie. Isn’t it handsome?’

            ‘It looks like a pile of junk to me, Peg.’

            ‘You’ve got no vision, darling. Oh, is that Pepper? Tony, you didn’t tell me Pepper would be coming! I’m going to invite her to the party. Steven, dear, keep Tony company, would you?’

            She darted away to where in the distance Steve could see a leggy redhead slowly rising from the depths of a handsome black car in the autoshop’s driveway. He and Tony watched the ladies embrace in silence.

            ‘You going to keep me company, Steven, dear?’

            Steve turned only his head, his arms still crossed, and with years of military experience made a show of looking Stark up and down, ever so slowly, and then dismissing him as worthless.

            He looked away and felt, rather than saw, Stark bristle with anger.

            ‘Listen, pumpkin, I don’t care what imaginary problem you’ve got with me, but you’re not going to stop Peggy coming here.’

            ‘What makes you think I could ever stop my mother from doing anything she wants to do?’

            They were quiet for a second. ‘I prefer birdbrain. At least when he acts like a dick, he does it with some flair.’

            Steve growled and rounded on Stark. ‘What did you just call my brother?’

            Stark proved himself either very brave or impossibly stupid by straightening his spine, sticking his chin out and grinning. ‘You want to dance, Cap? Figure you’ve probably been aching for someone to beat up, make yourself feel powerful again. Or… do you just want to hate-fuck someone hard enough to leave bruises? Come on, take me for a little tango.’

            ‘Don’t pretend you know a damned thing about what I want,’ Steve bit out, ‘little man playing with his machines, take those away and what’ve you got left?’

            Stark’s eyes flashed with something unnamed, dark and clever. ‘Playboy, genius, billionaire, philanthropist. Take your pick.’ He paused, doing that impossibly frustrating thing where he seemed to be taking in every tiny nuance of Steve’s face and posture, reading him. ‘You’ve been in the desert too long, soldier. You don’t know who I am, do you?’

            Steve stepped closer, invading the smaller man’s body space, forcing him back against the car. He inhaled, and for some reason the scent of engine oil and expensive soap made his stomach tighten.

            ‘I know exactly who you are. Do you really think I wouldn’t recognise the name, Stark? I’ve seen it written on every gun I’ve ever held. You might have Peggy fooled, but I know exactly what sort of man you are, and I’ll be waiting for you to fuck up. Hurt my family and I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.’

            ‘You don’t scare me, Star-Spangled Man.’

            ‘Then you might want to re-consider the “genius” part of your title, Stark.’

            Peggy’s cheerful voice from behind him reminded Steve that he was basically pressing her godson bodily against a disemboweled classic car, and he quickly stepped backwards, his eyes only dropping from Stark’s to watch the other man press a steady hand to the place in his chest where Steve could see the beginnings of a massive, brutal-looking scar.

            Stark pulled at his vest so the scar was covered and glared at Steve, who had to fight the sudden, insane urge to laugh. Stark’s glare was… cute. He had to be the world’s cutest murdering arms dealer.

            ‘Looks like you boys are getting to know each other,’ she said, patting Steve’s shoulder. ‘I knew you’d get along.’

            Stark opened his mouth to protest and at a sharp look from Steve snapped it shut with an audible _click_ , mimed throwing away a key.

            ‘Come on, Steven, I want you to get a good few hours’ sleep and something to eat before everyone starts arriving. Peter just used a texting message to let me know he and Clint are outside waiting for us. Isn’t technology marvellous?’

            Stark shuffled awkwardly as Peggy left a lipstick mark on his cheek, and glared at Steve by way of goodbye. As Steve escorted his gal to the waiting car – he could see Peter, small and dark-haired, jumping around in the backseat – she smiled up at him.

            ‘I’m so proud of you, darling. And I’m so glad you’re home.’

            He sat in the back of the car with a lap full of squirming seven-year-old and listened to Peggy cheerfully yell at Clint, who was stoically silent and wearing dark shades, occasionally looking back at Steve and grinning.

            ‘Jesus, Peg, if you want me to invite him, all you have to do is ask,’ he said, finally, and Peggy seemed to deflate.

            ‘Really? Just, I always seem to have to force you to bring him along.’

            ‘All in your head, duchess. If you want Coach there, he’ll be there, like a suit-wearing expressionless birthday present.’

            Steve sat up straighter. ‘Phil’s coming?’

            ‘Awesome,’ Peter breathed, suddenly still in his brother’s arms. ‘Mister Coulson always has gum.’

            Home. They drove back to the brownstone where he’d started his real childhood, and he held his baby brother tight, and realised with an almost unbearable relief that maybe things could always be this simple.

            He’d later look back and realised what a ridiculous thing that had been to think.


	2. Meet the Carters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an explanation is offered, peace is made and we learn the definition of 'Thor-sclamation'

It was ridiculous to be scared, Tony reminded himself as he paced nervously back and forth outside of the brownstone. He loved Peggy. God, most of the handful of decent memories from his childhood involved Peggy, before she’d stood up to his dad and had been thoroughly shut out of his life.       

            Well, his dad was long since dead, and when he’d come back from that hellhole desert to find Obie trying to take over his company, he’d realised that he didn’t have any family. He had Pepper and Happy, but he paid both of them to stick around and since Pepper had oh-so-gently dumped his sorry ass and made the excellent decision to marry Happy, it was awkward to hang out with either of them. And Rhodey was always away, and still kinda hadn’t forgiven Tony for the whole ‘no more weapons manufacture’ thing.

            Peggy was the closest thing he had to family, and when he’d heard through the grapevine that she was looking for an autoshop, it seemed insanity not to let her use his. And when it had turned out she knew less about engines than she did about cooking – i.e absolutely nothing – it had been perfectly reasonable for him to dump his multibillion dollar corporation into Pepper’s capable, manicured hands and run away to the tiny autoshop he’d almost forgotten he owned.

            His dad had bought it to ensure he had a garage whose exclusive job was to take care of the vintage cars he loved more than his own kid.

            Tony liked it because Peggy was there. Peggy, and the ridiculous gradschool girl he hired to sit at reception and read vampire sex books, and a StarkPlay doc full of loud, angry music. All that, and the place was full of welding irons.

            It was paradise. It was simple. Neither Peggy nor Darcy nor the angry music knew about Afghanistan in any real detail, and they never pitied him. And he could weld things to other things all day long.

            Until everything had been ruined by the arrival of a tall, ripped, impossibly handsome reminder of everything Tony had been trying his damned best to forget. And then, just to make it worse, the guy had started crying.

            Tony knew those kind of tears. The kind that burst out of grown men when they finally see their mothers – or, in his case, when he realised his mother was dead and would never be the woman he’d longed for her to be. Soft and broken, body wrecking and desperate, without elegance or sense.

            Damn it, he could’ve done without the sudden burst of _something_ that had curled and bloomed behind his ribs. He really could’ve done without feeling something _more_ , something bigger than sympathy.

            Empathy. There weren’t any real parallels. He wasn’t so self-obsessed as to think he could even begin to get what Captain Rogers-Carter had seen, had done. But he, more than most people, had some tiny understanding of what the man might be feeling.

            The Captain had lifted him bodily off the ground without even trying. Tony had tried and failed not to find that mind-blowingly hot.

            Unfortunately, it seemed that Peggy’s super-sexy son had a stick so far up his ass leaves were tickling his tonsils. And when wonder-boy had hissed that little barb about guns, Tony had understood why.

            He hated himself for what he’d done. It had been an unwelcome shock to realise that a stranger – a soldier, no less – hated him for it, too.

            He collapsed into the bench that sat outside the house. He’d been here before, dozens of times. He’d helped Peter with his advanced class homework – and what was it about Peggy that helped her unlock such potential in her collection of children? – and he’d sat around and drunk foul alcohol-free beer with Clint.

            The Captain had obviously thought he didn’t like Hawk, but he did. He really did – the guy was a dick, but he was funny and clever and he didn’t take any of Tony’s shit. He’d even let Hawk talk him into making Stark Industries a sponsor for the 2016 Olympics in Rio – all it had taken was letting Tony beat him at Wii archery and wear Hawk’s London gold medal round the house for a while.

            He shouldn’t be so scared, but he was. Like a little kid, all he could keep thinking was _what if they don’t like me?_

            The woman sitting next to him sighed and he jumped into the air and screamed like a girl.

            She stared at him passively. ‘I’ve met girlscouts with manlier screams than you.’

            He glared right back. ‘You make a habit of making girlscouts scream, red?’

            ‘Occasionally.’ She rose with improbable grace and offered her hand like it was a priceless gift. ‘I’m Natasha.’

            He blinked at her. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting from Peggy’s only daughter, though Peg talked about her enough that he felt a little as if he knew her.

            He knew Tasha was very quiet, and could be ruthless, that she had trouble getting along with people but was passionately loyal. He knew she was studying ballet at Julliard, that she and Clint were the very best of friends, and that she spoke Russian.

            What Peggy had failed to mention was how utterly terrifying the girl was.

            ‘Tony,’ he said, once his heart stopped pounding, and shook the offered hand. Her fingernails were very, very sharp.

            ‘I know. Why aren’t you going inside?’

            She was dressed all in black, including a _Dresden Dolls_ concert t-shirt Tony immediately covetted, and wore huge, ancient-looking combat boots that made her look very un-ballerina like. Her face was a perfect, pretty blank, and her hair was the colour of sin.

            ‘I’m terrified of your brother.’

            ‘Oh.’ She considered this. ‘Which one?’

            ‘Can’t be me, I’ve never seen the man before in my life,’ came a rich, measured voice from behind Tony. He spun to find a tall, thin man with long black hair and a mocking expression looking him up and down. ‘Good evening, Natasha.’

            ‘What kind of a hello is that?’ she asked sharply, and the tall man rolled strangely vivid green eyes – his eyebrow was pierced – and stooped to envelope her in a hug, kissing her cheek.

            Tony felt a grudging respect for the guy. It almost seemed as if he wasn’t scared of her.

            ‘This is Loki,’ Natasha explained, tugging absently on a lock of the tall guy’s hair like she was pulling his pigtails and making him grimace. ‘Who are you terrified of?’

            ‘TERROR?’ A massive hand slammed down on Tony’s shoulder and he may have screamed again. Just a little. ‘WHY DO WE SPEAK OF TERROR, SISTER?’

            The owner of the massive hand placed another one on top of Tony’s head and used it to tilt him backwards, and he found himself looking up into the megawatt smile of the tallest, most muscular surfer dude he’d ever seen. The huge guy’s smile made his whole face crumple up.

            ‘Indoor voices, Thor,’ she said mildly. ‘This is Tony, Peggy’s new project.’

            ‘New project?’ Tony squeaked, even as Thor – seriously? _Thor?_ – boomed, ‘A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU, BROTHER.’

            ‘She’s not adopting him, idiot,’ Loki explained smoothly. ‘The man’s got to be pushing fifty.’

            ‘Lies and slander!’ Tony managed, outrage overwhelming whatever muddle of confused terror and social embarassment he was dealing with. ‘I’m forty-two!’

            ‘Society is full of ladies who have of their own volition been forty-two for _years_ ,’ Loki purred, smirking, and Tony bared his teeth.

            ‘Oh no, you hipster piece of shit, you did not just _misquote_ Oscar Wilde to make a point about my age. Do you really want to die?’

            Thor laughed. It may or may not have made the earth shake so hard aftershocks were felt on Coney Island, and Tony had to fight the urge to check his pacemaker.

            ‘HE NAMES YOU HIPSTER, BROTHER. BECAUSE OF THE CLOTHING AND YOUR METAL DECORATIONS.’

            Loki looked about ready to stage a hostile takeover of Manhattan, but was distracted by Natasha stealing his scarf and wrapping it around her shoulders like a shawl. He seemed unable to process this new indignity, and just stood there with his heckles raised like a big, sleek indie-rock cat.

            ‘So, who are you scared of?’ Natasha repeated patiently.

            ‘Of _whom_ are you scared. And also: why are we all standing around in Peggy’s garden?’

            Tony was starting to get a tension headache. No, scratch that – he definitely had a tension headache and that was a perfect excuse to leave now and never have to see any of them again. Especially soldier-boy with his stupid eyes, the exact color of the overwhelming blue of Monet’s waterlily paintings.

            ‘BROTHER BRUCE! IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG!’ Thor boomed. Tony was beginning to think he didn’t have another volume setting.

He took in the new arrival, wanting nothing more than to take a long nap and never again have to deal with Peggy’s hundreds of kids.

            Except Peter. He was cute, and Tony was already grooming him to go into engineering. And possibly Hawk, as long as the guy never again mentioned that whole incident with the pineapple.

            The new guy was small – that is, pretty much Tony’s height – and adorably rumpled. It was weird to so immediately decide that a fullgrown man with salt-and-pepper hair and glasses was adorable, but he absolutely was.

            He was wearing an impressively ugly purple shirt and he blinked at Tony slowly. Tony could almost see the _buffering_ symbol above his head.

            ‘Hi,’ he said, giving an awkward little wave. ‘I’m Bruce.’

            ‘The physics guy, right?’ Tony asked, desperately looking for an ally against all of the very pretty, very deadly looking Carters.

            ‘Um. Yes?’ Bruce blinked, then smiled. ‘You’re Tony Stark. Peggy said I might get a chance to pick your brain. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’           

            Tony shook Bruce’s hand and fought back a panicked desire to feed him blueberries and tea and make him stay by his side forever, to protect him from his terrifying siblings. He knew a kindred soul when he saw one, and now that he had a science bro, he’d be damned if he’d let the bastard abandon him.

            He physically pulled Bruce over to stand beside him and ignored his bemused, peaceful expression. The guy was so serene he made Natasha look like she was on uppers.

            ‘Bruce is my new best friend. He will defend me against all of your brutal questioning.’

            Thor, Loki and Natasha all looked to their brother to see if this was, indeed, true. Bruce shrugged. ‘This man is the father of clean, sustainable energy. I will not permit him to be murdered by any of you this evening. Unless he accidentally says something mean to Peggy.’ He paused, considering. ‘Or Steve.’

            ‘You are a kind and true science bro and when the revolution comes, you will be spared.’

            Thor grinned. ‘REVOLUTION? WHAT IS THIS REVOLUTION OF WHICH YOU SPEAK?’

            Bruce sighed so heavily Tony could feel it against his side, where he had tucked Bruce for safekeeping. ‘Indoor voices, Thor. I’ve been writing a research paper all day and I’m only three to four Thor-sclamations away from a full blown migrane.’

            Tony blinked and Loki explained causally, ‘ _Thor-sclamation_ , noun. See also: _Thor-sclamate._ To excitedly misunderstand something and then yell about it in broken English until someone shuts you up with a toaster pastry.’

            ‘TOASTER PASTRY?’ Thor echoed, looking hopeful.

            ‘Don’t let Thor fool you with the thick-skulled warrior act,’ Bruce said, ‘he’s a grad student studying Mediaeval Literature at Colombia. He just likes to…’

            ‘Boom?’

            ‘Boom,’ Bruce agreed. ‘So, of whom are you terrified?’

            All of the Carter siblings looked at him with interest. Except for Loki, who looked at him with distain. Although Tony was beginning to believe that was his default expression.

            ‘It’s either Peter, Clint, or Steve,’ Natasha mused.

            ‘Aw, come on. Who’s scared of Peter?’ Tony asked.

            ‘You have obviously never taken that child to an amusement park,’ commented Loki.

            ‘So, Steve or Clint. And I know, from my weekly Skype with Hawk, that a certain billionaire has recently designed a certain olympic archer a certain new prototype virtual reality shooting range,’ Natasha summarised succinctly. ‘Which begs the question: what did you do to Steve, and do I need to kill you?’

            ‘I didn’t do anything to him!’

            ‘Tasha, he’s telling the truth.’ Tony tensed up, recognising Steve’s voice immediately. ‘Don’t hurt him. For some inexplicable reason, Peggy thinks he’s pretty swell.’

            ‘Aw, come on, Cap, who even says _swell_ anymore?’ Tony whined before he’d thought it through. All the Carters, Steve included, stared at him silently and threateningly for a long moment.

            ‘I GROW WEARY OF THIS AWKWARDNESS. COME, BROTHER TONY, WE WILL FEAST AND YOU MAY TELL ME HOW YOU CAME TO FEAR OUR SWEET BROTHER STEVEN, WHOM ALL KNOW TO BE GENTLE AND GENEROUS.’

            Thor, both dinner-plate sized hands on Tony’s shoulders, guided the engineer up the front stairs and into the foyer. Steve had to turn to let them past, and he gave Tony an unreadable look as he brushed past him.

            ‘You only say that ‘cause you’re hoping I’ll bake, Thor.’

            ‘INDEED, STEVEN. I HAVE MISSED YOUR APPLE PIES ALMOST AS MUCH AS I HAVE MISSED YOUR BELOVED SELF, THESE LONG YEARS.’

            Thor’s booming, in the stairwell of the apartment block Peggy owned, was almost deafening. Even so, Tony heard Steve’s sigh as he started climbing the stairs behind them both.

            ‘Indoor voices, Thor.’

            ‘You bake apple pie, Cap? Seriously?’

            He managed to get a glimpse of those stupid baby-blues, which were frowning at him. ‘You really find me amusing, don’t you, Stark?’

            ‘Well, you really find me repulsive, so I’d say we’re about even, Steven.’

            Cheerfully unaware of how doing so might ruin Tony’s delicate manhood, Thor actually lifted him the last few stairs and dropped him down at the top landing like a ragdoll. The door was open, and something delicious was cooking on the stove, watched over by Hawk in a frilly pink apron and Peter wearing a chef’s hat.

            Peggy, always a fan of the attack hug, managed to capture Tony in a brief embrace before throwing herself into Thor’s arms and allowing herself to be spun around.

            ‘ _Darling_ ,’ she cried, ‘you made it! I thought you had to work at the museum tonight!’

            ‘NO, TANTE PEGGY, FOR I EXPLAINED TO MY SUPERVISOR THAT MY BROTHER HAD RETURNED FROM WAR, AND SHE PERMITTED ME TO TAKE THE DAY!’

            ‘I’m really glad, Thor. I missed you,’ Steve said with perfect sincerity, and Tony watched him, looking for some sign that he wasn’t so perfect.

            There was no sign in Steve that he was the same guy who’d pressed him against a car and threatened him a few hours ago. That guy had been tired, dirty and on his very last thread of patience; he’d been through hell and he’d just burst into tears in front of a stranger. This guy had taken a shower, was dressed in immaculately pressed chinos and a button-down, and had his dark blond hair very carefully parted.

            He seemed neat, in control, and almost pathetically relieved to be with the people he loved. His smile, when Thor enveloped him in a bone-crushing bear hug, was like sunshine.

            Tony rubbed the scar on his sternum and wondered why his heart was hurting.

            ‘Peter!’ Peggy yelled, ‘Tony’s here!’

            Within moments, without really understanding how it had happened, Tony found himself sat at a massive dining table with Peter showing him YouTube videos of things being microwaved until they exploded, all of the Carter family moving like a well-oiled machine around them.

            ‘Can I help?’ he asked, and got a beaming smile from one of Peggy’s other guests, an elderly German doctor who kept giggling at each explosion from the other side of Peter.

            ‘ _Nein_ , and you shouldn’t ask. We are guests, so we let them serve us. Just ignore Phillip – he does not enjoy being a guest. He enjoys very little, don’t you, Phillip?’

            Hawk’s coach, a pleasant if severe looking man of very few words, inclined his head graciously from where he was sitting in front of the television and watching _Super Nanny_.

            ‘Oh.’ Tony fidgetted, unsure of what to do with himself given this new information. ‘How come Peter doesn’t have to help?’

            ‘I’m entertaining the guests,’ Peter supplied helpfully.

            Tony looked down at the mess of Peter’s hair and considered the small human’s uses. ‘Listen, Petey, I was wondering-‘

            ‘You want to know about Steve,’ Peter said, flicking fingers across the StarkPad Tony had given him for his last birthday.

            ‘What makes you think that?’

            ‘The child is no idiot, Stark. You have been staring at Steven for the past hour,’ Erskine murmured, and Peter – the little traitor – nodded.

            ‘Busted. Thing is, I don’t like people I can’t read, and I can’t get a read on soldier-boy. I don’t get him.’

            Peter frowned without looking up from where he appeared to have found film of a sloth delicately handing a lady a flower petal. ‘What’s to get? He’s Steve. He’s super nice. He’s kind of the leader – whenever he’s home, everyone starts visiting more, and we hang out. It’s really cool. Everyone at school thinks it’s all kinds of awesome that my big brother is a hero.’

            ‘Why did he join the army? All you kids go to good schools – Peggy’s got enough money to take care of you.’

            ‘His friend,’ Erskine said simply. ‘His best friend, from the foster home they were in as children, enlisted. Bucky was fostered by a terrible family, who kept him from Steven, for far too many years. Finally, they found each other, and Bucky was joining the marines. The boys, their fathers were soldiers. Steven joined to keep Bucky out of trouble.’

            ‘He died,’ Peter said, softly, putting down the tablet. ‘That’s why Steve’s so sad. Peggy says he got really sad when Bucky died, and it’s like a sickness, so the army sent him home to get well again. She says we have to love him extra hard.’

            Tony’s heart hurt again, and to get rid of the feeling he tussled Peter’s hair. Anything to stop the kid sounding so heartbroken.

            ‘Hey, Petey, it’s alright. He’s lucky to have you on his team – he’ll be fine.’

            He felt bad for lying to the kid. It had been a little over two years since Tony had come back from the desert, and he still wasn’t fine. He probably wouldn’t ever be just _fine_ again – that was something reserved for children or ignorant idiots who just drank themselves stupid and ignored the damage they were doing to the world.

            Steve was neither, and Tony couldn’t begin to imagine how hard it was for him. He’d lost so much.

            He was a massive bag of dicks, but that didn’t mean Tony couldn’t feel sorry for him.

            There was a flurry of action and within ten minutes, everyone had been carefully arranged around a table so heavy with food that it looked like it should be bowing under the weight. Peggy, despite being tiny and frail, bullied all of the varied selection of enormous warrior-men, olympic athletes, homicidal ballerinas and perpetually angry-looking emos into a seemingly random pattern around the table with the minimum of fuss and an awful lot of yelling.

            Tony found himself sitting on a wobbly folding chair between Natasha and Steve, and after Tasha gave him a look which could burn through skin and poked him hard in the ribs with her fork, he wound up pressed so tightly against Steve’s side that he could feel the rumble of the guy’s voice when he talked.

            ‘Tash, is that strictly necessary?’

            ‘You know the rules, Stevie. No one invades the personal bubble while I’m eating.’ She poured two fingers of what looked like very nice vodka – Tony’s mouth watered and he knew Steve probably felt the shiver run through him – and knocked it back. ‘ _Chtob vse byli zdorovy_. And for those who are no longer with us.’

            She passed the bottle to Tony, who refused to touch it and looked at it like it might bite him.

            ‘What’s the matter, Stark? Don’t like being handed things?’ Steve asked.

            ‘Steve, drop it,’ Clint said suddenly and sharply, from the other side of the table.

            ‘Why should I? We’re drinking to Bucky.’ Steve shifted so he could look down at Tony, who had never in his life wished so hard he was physically bigger. ‘My best friend in the world was killed, and you can’t even suck it up, play nice and drink to his goddamned memory?’

            Across the table, Tony faintly heard Loki whistle low. ‘Did Steve just _swear_?’

            ‘I’m really sorry about your friend, Cap, but you don’t understand-‘

            ‘No, you know what? You don’t get to tell me what I understand.’

            He was too close. Tony could feel how tense his muscles were, could smell Peggy’s fancy old-fashioned soap on the guy’s skin. He hated feeling caged, and he knew he was only a couple more of soldier-boy’s barbs away from doing or saying something he’d regret.

            Steve’s eyes were so cold. Could anyone else see it – his brothers, his mother? Tasha? Could any of them see how cold he was?

            ‘He’s fucking dead, and for all I know it was one of your company’s landmines that tore him apart. The least you can do is drink to his memory.’

            ‘I can’t,’ Tony said, so quiet, and yet it seemed to echo. No one was breathing; Steve seemed to have forgotten they were there.

            ‘Why the hell not?’

            ‘Because I’m a fucking alcoholic with a heart condition,’ Tony hissed, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see the oh-so familiar expression on Steve’s face.

            The surprise, disappointment and disgust. Bag of dicks or not, Tony knew that Peggy’s soldier was a good man. Good men always looked at him like he was dirty. That didn’t mean he had to watch them do it.

            ‘I was a naïve, idiotic rich kid with too many brains and too little sense, ok? He told me to go to Afghanistan, demonstrate the new fuck-off gun I’d built because I was bored, and there were these kids. These soldiers. They were clever and funny and they died because they were in the same truck as me. They died to protect me.

            ‘And there was this other hostage in the cave, this man – Yinsen. He did fucking open-heart surgery with a rusty knife and he saved my life, but I couldn’t save him. I came home, and I damned near destroyed my company because I wouldn’t let them make things to kill people any more. I couldn’t have any more blood on my hands. I couldn’t, no matter what it cost. And the man who I thought was family tried to take it from me. And then I drank so much I almost killed myself, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that your friend is gone.’

            He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t hear anything but his own breath – Steve had to be holding his, ‘cause Tony couldn’t feel his ribs move.

           ‘So, you know what? You can keep on hating me. I know you probably need someone to hate right now, and God knows I’m a really easy target. But just know that no matter how much you think you despise me, it’ll never even come close to the way I feel about myself.’ He stood, his eyes still closed, and fisted his hand on his chest, the instinctive motion to make sure his heart was still beating. ‘Peggy, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t… this wasn’t a good idea. I’m so sorry.’

           There was a quick movement beside him and then two strong hands were pressing him, hard, back into his seat. He finally looked, and saw Natasha glaring at him.

          ‘Sit down and eat your damned meal, Stark,’ she commanded. ‘Some of us are too hungry to deal with your bullshit. Also, apologise to Peter and Peggy for all the swearing.’

          ‘And to me,’ Clint said, waving his hand. ‘I was deeply offended.’

          Steve’s voice shook a little. ‘Peter, Peggy, I’m sorry.’ All of the tension left him in a rush, and where he was pressed against his side Tony felt him slump. One of Steve’s hands awkwardly hovered, and then settled for patting his shoulder gently. ‘Stark. I’m… I’m sorry. I guess I’m still not… well.’

          Tony didn’t know where to look, but his gaze somehow fell on Peggy, at the head of the table. Her expression was almost unbearably fond, looking at him, and his heart lurched again, uncomfortable and raw.

         ‘Apology accepted, spangles. Pass me Petey’s stupid orange juice – Bucky can rest easy knowing I’m getting my vitamin C.’

          Steve snorted with sudden, impossible laughter, and before anyone really knew what was happening, they were all laughing so hard it hurt, stuffing their faces with chicken and potatoes and listening to Steve tell stories about being Bucky’s skinny sidekick when they were kids, and his massive sidekick when they were men.

          The tension didn’t come back, and even when Tasha got up to play Wii tennis with Peter and Hawk, Steve didn’t shift away from where they were shoved together.

          It was peaceful. Neither Tony nor Steve saw the look that Erskine and Peggy exchanged over mouthfuls of Clint’s famous cannoli.

          The war was over, and they were home.


	3. Darcy and Maria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A truce is reached with Darcy, and Steve discovers something alarming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished writing chapter 6, and I got a little over-excited... there'll be a good couple of days between this post and the next.

It was a stupid idea, Steve knew, and yet here he was, hovering outside _Stark Automotive_ ’s reception with a peace offering and fear of the post-pubescent fangirl manning the desk keeping him from crossing the threshold.

She was eyeing him through the glass door as if she were considering licking him if he got within tongue distance. He tried to stare back, like a grown man who could go into any damned reception he wanted without fear of being assaulted by a woman half his size.

She slowly lifted both her hands, fisted them in the air in front of her, and mimed revving a motorcycle.

Then she winked. Steve shuddered and considered just packing the whole thing in and going home.

But Peggy had presented him with the ancient, beautiful motorcycle as an advance on his inheritance, and she’d been so pleased with herself for finding something to occupy him. Apparently, she didn’t believe that sitting around the house reading Peter’s comic books and sketching was a productive use of his time, and she’d taken it upon herself to find him something to do with himself.

‘It’s been a week, love. That’s enough time to rest – you’re never at your best unless you’re doing something productive. Besides, I need someone to look after Tony for a while.’

Steve had looked up from his copy of _Sandman_ – one of Clint’s, though it was the third time Steve had read it from beginning to end – and blinked at her. ‘What do you mean, look after him? He’s a grown man, Peg.’

‘Please, you know as well as I do how little that counts for sometimes. He needs taking care of, and I’ve got to go visit Sharon and the new baby for a couple of days.’

Steve had automatically smiled at the mention of his friend and Peggy’s niece. He was getting better at smiling, even if it usually felt like a lie.

‘So you want me to work with him to put the bike back together?’

‘Exactly, darling. You owe it to that boy to get to know him – you were cruel, Stevie. It’s not like you to judge people by first impressions and hearsay.’

He didn’t tell her that if he’d judged Tony by first impressions, his whole opinion of the man would be that of a handsome, eccentric mechanic with very pretty, very clever eyes. And a stupid beard.

‘Do you think he knows he’s your new pet project?’

‘Of course he does, he’s a genius. And besides, he’s not my only project. Thus, the motorcycle. Take it as a peace offering and go make nice with him.’

She’d stroked his hair, which he hadn’t bothered to tidy and stuck up in tufts. She smoothed it with soft fingers.

‘Peggy, what if he hates me?’ Steve had asked quietly. ‘He should. I was awful, and… I don’t know how to work this world anymore. Everything’s changed since I went away, and I feel like I’ve been asleep forever. I don’t know how to be around anyone but soldiers and family, and even then, it’s sometimes hard to find the right words to say to you.’

‘That’s the brilliant thing about Tony,’ Peggy had explained, pressing a quick kiss to Steve’s forehead. ‘He never bothers trying to find the right words, and he’s too scatterbrained to hold a grudge. Just don’t let him drive you away, and don’t let him run away from you.’

‘Cryptic advice, Peg.’

‘I’m trying the whole “sage yet aloof spirit guide” thing,’ she had said with a dry chuckle, and shephered him out of the house.

Which was how he found himself standing outside Stark’s building, having walked the bloody motorcycle all the way from Peggy’s house. He sighed and ducked his head, letting the receptionist win the staring contest.

‘Hey, Cap. Why are you loitering?’

Steve whipped his head around so fast his neck cricked and he rubbed it as he took in the sight of Tony getting out of a sleek black limo.

This… this was a version of Tony he’d only ever seen in magazines. At Peggy’s house, he’d been wearing a threadbare _Echo and the Bunnymen_ t-shirt and a pair of jeans with only a few grease spots on them. As the older man walked towards him, he took off a pair of rose tinted sunglasses, pushing them up onto his hair, and pulled off the metallic-looking jacket of his grey suit.

He was wearing a pink shirt. It actually sort of suited him, which just re-inforced Steve’s belief that there was some bubble surrounding Stark that distorted the natural order of the universe.

This theory was supported by all the evidence he had of things going very weird, very quickly, when he was suddenly thrust into bubble-distance of the man.

‘This,’ Tony said slowly, breaking Steve out of a downward thought spiral, ‘is a very sexy bike.’

‘Peggy sent me down with it. Did she say…’

Tony looked up, waiting for the end of the sentence, and Steve shrugged, helpless to explain that he’d been assigned Tony-sitting duty for the forseeable future.

‘She’s decided to make you my new nanny, has she? She said something about restoring her dad’s bike, but she neglected to mention you, spangles.’

‘Look, it’s Steve, alright? Not Cap or spangles or Alpha. Which, by the way, is a reference I don’t get.’

Tony looked up from where he was crouched, inspecting the bike’s wiring and getting grease on a four thousand dollar suit. ‘You’ve never seen _Dollhouse_?’

‘Um. No?’

‘ _Buffy? Firefly? Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog?_ ’

‘I swear to God you’re making these up.’

Tony looked at him like he’d kicked a puppy, and then his smile turned calculating. ‘But you’re open to experimentation?’

Steve could’ve sworn there was some kind of inuendo in that, but damned if he could work out the difference between Tony talking in double entendres and Tony talking in general.

‘I’m open to letting you explain what the hell you’re talking about like a reasonable adult, rather than just spouting random nouns at me.’

‘Challenge accepted. Come on, we’re going to give Darcy her seventeenth explanation of the “no-no touch” concept so that you can safely come into the workshop without being molested. Well.’ He paused, flashed Steve a cryptic look. ‘By Darcy, that is. I promise nothing.’

‘Reassuring, Tony.’

Tony’s smile was tiny and, possibly, genuine. It was a faint shadow of the smile he’d given Peggy.

‘That’s the first time you’ve used my name.’

 Steve sighed. ‘I’m really sorry for jumping to conclusions, and I’m going to make an effort with you. You’re important to Peg, so that means you’re important to me.’ Steve politely ignored the way that Tony tripped over his own feet at this declaration. ‘Besides, Hawk, Peter and Bruce have all taken me aside to tell me to play nice with you. You also seem to have won over Erskine, but that man’s putty to anyone who’ll listen to his anecdotes or supply him with schnapps.’

‘Noted,’ Tony said, pushing the door to reception open.

Steve didn’t mention that Tasha and Loki, drunk off their faces and giggling too much to breathe, had started toasting to the beauty and brains which would surely bless all the future babies of the Stark-Rogers family. Thor hadn’t realised they were joking and had gotten very over-excited about his non-existent nieces and nephews. He had started singing something which Steve had been informed by Loki was a Norwegian folksong about true love and brave warriors. Which did seem to be the overriding theme of most of the songs Thor knew which hadn’t been sung by One Direction.

Darcy – the brunette with the rabid facial expression – purred, ‘good morning, Mister Stark.’

‘Morning, Jaws,’ Tony said conversationally. ‘You’ve met Steve, Peggy’s son?’

‘We have not been formally introduced in the way of my people.’

‘You tried that when you met me. There is no way in hell I am going to believe that people in New Mexico swap shirts by way of introduction, no matter what fake wikipedia articles you print and bring in to work.’

‘I plead the fifth,’ she sniffed.

‘Fine. Anyway, Steve is going to be coming in for the next… however long, to fix up that chopper in the driveway. You are not to make him feel any more uncomfortable than you would naturally do just by being you.’

‘Did that make sense?’ Steve hissed, and Tony waved him off.

‘Shh, I speak fluent gradstudent.’

‘I reject your proposal, on the grounds that I will stop hitting on Captain Tightbuns when Captain Tightbuns stops making my ovaries explode.’

Steve choked on his own tongue a little and Tony patted him on the back.

‘Captain Tightbuns is not in control of the effect he has on anyone’s ovaries, Darcy.’

‘Please stop calling me that.’

‘In that case, I am not in control of my perfectly healthy biological urge to hit that ‘til he’s walking bowlegged.’

‘Ok, you’ve definitely got to stop that, because if he blushes any more he’s going to spontaneously combust. Steve? You alright, pumpkin? Don’t worry, we’re wearing her down. This is negotiation, this is my thing.’ Tony pressed the back of his hand against Steve’s scarlet cheek. It was blessedly cool and didn’t do anything to stop him blushing. ‘Alright, you buxom sex pest, how’s this: you play nice for the duration of his project, and at the end of it, he’ll take his shirt off and let you squeeze a pec.’

‘I am not agreeing to that, Tony.’

‘Which pec?’ Darcy sounded suspicious.

‘The left one. I think its name is Perky, though despite heavy-handed hints I have very rudely not yet been introduced.’

‘Deal. I play nice, and I get to meet Perky.’

‘That is not its name. We are not naming my pecs. Tony-‘

‘It’s called compromise, Cap. This way, everyone gets out of this situation with the minimum amount of groping.’

‘Why must there be any groping?’ Steve asked desperately.

Tony stopped dead in his tracks from where he was sauntering towards the workshop and shot Steve a scathing, surprised look.

‘Steve, there’s _always_ groping. It’s _Darcy_.’

‘It’s true,’ she said, smiling sunnily at him. ‘I think I have that tattooed somewhere, but I’ve forgotten where. Help me find it?’

‘That is not playing nice,’ Steve hissed at her and darted after Tony, who was already opening the workshop’s big outer door and wheeling the bike in, uncaring of how it got grease on the suit. ‘You’re ruining that outfit, Tony.’

Tony looked down at it, surprised. ‘Damn it, Pepper’s going to kill me. I’m going to go get some overalls. You want overalls?’

Steve shrugged and took off his button-down so that he was just wearing a white vest and an old pair of ratty jeans he’d found in a drawer and had probably been there since his very first growth spurt. They were a little tight, but he didn’t mind getting them dirty.

‘I’m good,’ he said, dropping down into a crouch beside the bike and running his hands over its pipes.

He looked up to find Tony blinking at him. For a smart guy, he did seem to spend a lot of time looking dazed.

‘You’re good,’ Tony repeated. ‘He’s good.’

‘Yeah. You got a spare toolkit?’

‘By that pile of toasters.’

Steve looked in the direction Tony absently gestured as he wandered from the room in search of overalls, absently rubbing at his chest.

Sure enough, there was a heap of toasters, all in various states of disrepair, and beside them a classic red metal toolkit.

After a minute he heard Tony come back in, and looked up to find the other man dressed in an ancient black band t-shirt he must’ve been wearing under the suit, the sleeves of his blue overalls knotted around his waist.

Steve wanted to draw him so much his fingertips itched.

‘I like toasters.’

‘Noted,’ Steve said, smiling. ‘This bike, by the way, is a complete wreck.’

‘Don’t listen to him, sugar, you’re just a little neglected.’ Tony dropped down beside him and joined him in stroking the bike, though Tony’s touch seemed less diagnostic and more… caressing. ‘All bikes are ladies, Stevie. What’s her name?’

Steve swallowed, hard. Tony’s hands were distracting – tanned and calloused with intricate patterns of scars.

‘Any suggestions?’

For a second, they just checked the bike over in companionable silence, only broken when Tony very suddenly snapped something metallic off of the underside of the bike and said, ‘how about Maria?’

‘Ex-girlfriend?’

Tony’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he grinned. ‘My mom.’

‘I like it. My mother gave us the bike, yours gets to name her. Seems fair.’

He didn’t mention the _us_ , but Tony’s shoulders lost a little of their tension and he threw a wrench at Steve’s head in a way that might be described as friendly.

‘Come on then, apple pie, time to get to work.’

After a week of having time slip by so slowly it felt like it would never be time to go pick Peter up from school, it was strange to look up after what felt like only a few minutes to see hours had passed and his stomach was grumbling.

He’d hit his growth spurt really late, in his senior year of highschool, and he still wasn’t used to how much food his body demanded. In the marines, his guys had always joked that that an army marched on its stomach, but only Cap let his march on him.

He was also, pathetically, a grumpy bastard when his blood sugar dropped, and in the name of his attempts at peacemaking with Tony it was in everyone’s interests that he eat something.

‘Tony.’

‘Hmmmm?’

‘Tony, what are you doing with that toaster?’

‘Armies, corporations and governments would kill for that information.’

‘Right. Um, I’m going to go get food. What do you want?’

Tony looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged covered in tiny parts of toaster, obviously surprised.

‘You want to buy me lunch?’

‘I thought they said you were a genius? I though _you_ said you were a genius?’

‘Coffee, smartass. Much hot, strong coffee. I take it like my men: milky, sweet and strong. And take my wallet – buying a billionaire lunch is just ridiculous. I once found three hundred dollars in my bunny slippers.’

‘”Milky” is not a descriptor, Tony. And coffee is not lunch.’

‘Your face is not lunch.’

‘Touche.’

‘Wallet is over there, somewhere. In jacket,’ Tony said absently, waving off into the middle distance. Steve ignored him and wandered through the open garage doors, headed for the sandwich place he’d noticed across the street.

It was mid June, and the sun felt good on his bare arms and chest. It was a different kind of heat in Brooklyn than in the desert; more humid, and somehow brighter. It was familiar and sweet, and he smiled up into the sky.

It had been hours – since he’d first seen Tony that morning – since he’d thought about Bucky. He stumbled, the pain so sudden and overwhelming that he could barely breathe, and he clutched the wall, doubled over.

He’d forgotten. He’d sworn he’d never forget, and he’d let himself just go about his day as if nothing had happened. He’d let himself let go.

The world was swimming in front of his eyes and he shut them tight, hands forming fists against the cold brick of the alley wall. This was why they’d sent him home – the way that he felt the loss like a black creature on his back, strangling him, pressing him down. He wanted to go to sleep, wanted to sink down into the dark until nothing hurt any more, until it was just numb.

Everything was always so cold, when he remembered. There was so much sun, so much heat, and he couldn’t feel it. Goosebumbs broke out on his skin and his heart was beating too quickly, so quickly it felt like just a long, low scream rising up his neck and almost – not quite – forcing its way out of his lips.

‘Breathe.’ The voice was strong and sure of itself. ‘That’s an order, soldier.’

He managed, gasping like he’d been winded, and he became aware of warm hands on either side of his chest, holding him steady.

They felt like the only warm things in the world, and he grabbed them, held them too tight.

‘Again. Breathe for me.’

He managed it, the relief of oxygen making his head light.

‘You’re in Brooklyn. You’re outside of _Stark Autoshop_ and you’re on your way to get coffee and sandwiches. You are alive, and healthy, and no one’s going to hurt you.’

‘He isn’t,’ Steve gasped, his voice so brittle that the words made it break. ‘He isn’t alive.’

‘What would he say if he saw you like this?’

Steve opened his eyes, surprised by the question, and didn’t feel any shock to realise it was Tony’s hands he was crushing, Tony’s smooth, measured voice saying such warm things.

The stupid beard was a stupid frame around his stupid mouth. That was why Steve was staring at it.

‘He’d tell me to pull my head outta my ass and get the freaking coffee.’

‘A man after my own heart,’ Tony said lightly, but when Steve glanced up, there wasn’t any humour in his eyes. ‘You’re allowed to feel alright, Steve. It’s not fair to him, making him into a weight you have to carry.’

How did he know about the weight? Steve desperately squeezed the hands he’d captured, and felt them hesitate, then squeeze back.

‘I don’t want to forget him,’ he whispered, barely more than a breath.

‘You won’t. You’ll never forget. But he shouldn’t be a burden, Steve. He should be strength.’

Steve blinked, and just like that, it wasn’t so unbearable. He felt like something had broken, and he straightened up, somehow forgetting to drop Tony’s hands.

‘I’m so-‘

‘No. You don’t apologise to me for that. You never apologise for that,’ Tony snapped, anger flashing in his eyes. ‘I get it, Steve. You’ve got to be a superhero, for your family. But you don’t have to do it for me. I never want to hear you apologising for still having that fucking desert in your system.’

He dropped Tony’s hands, immediately missing the warmth despite the heat of the day, and allowed Tony to lead him imperiously across the road and into the sandwich shop, where he ignored Steve and began flirting outrageously with the ladies who ran the place.

Steve held back, but when Tony waved him over, he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and allowed Tony to wrap an arm around him and present him to the owners.

‘Ladies, this is Steve, who is in desperate need of whatever hippy-dippy calming tea Peggy’s always in here buying.’

 ‘She buys it for Bruce,’ Steve murmured, and the blonde lady perked up.

‘Oh, you’re Peggy’s soldier! It’s such a pleasure to meet you, we’re always hearing about you. I’m Carol, and this is my girlfriend, Jess.’

Steve returned the smile and gratefully accepted a mug of tea from the other lady – Jess. ‘Thanks. Could I get a falafel sandwich, too, please? Oh, and banana tempura. And some of that carrot cake? And green tea moshi. Please.’

Tony made a strange sound and Steve turned to blink at him.

‘What? I’m hungry.’

‘It is tragically unfair you can eat like that and still look like that.’

‘You need to eat, too, Tony. You can’t just get coffee.’

Tony rolled his eyes and Steve turned to look at the ladies, who were both beaming like they’d been given an early Christmas present.

‘Fine. Meatball sub, and I swear to all the dark gods if you give me soya there will be blood.’

‘Alright, mister cranky, if you want to poison yourself, go right ahead,’ the smaller lady – Jess – said cheerfully, and went about sorting their food. Carol came out from behind the serving island and steered them to a seat by the widow, dumping a cup of sweet-smelling coffee in front of Tony. Apparently his need for caffeine went without saying.

Steve sipped his tea and focused on Tony’s knee jiggling rhythmically up and down, on the scent of incense in the shop, on the warmth of the sun through the window.

The tea was delicious, warm and soothing. He could feel his heart calming, his body beginning to recover.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Tony asked, voice carefully casual.

‘Not really.’

‘Fair enough. Do you want a blueberry?’

Steve blinked at the offered bag of dried blueberries, then delicately dipped his fingers in and pulled a couple out, popped them in his mouth and chewed on them suspiciously.

‘Thanks.’

‘No need to look at me like that, they’re not poisoned. I stopped eating when they brought me back from the desert, and Pepper found if she left blueberries all over the place I tended to eat them when I found them. I guess she got me trained, ‘cause it got to be a habit, carrying them with me.’

‘That was the lady in the car, the other day, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Steve looked at him consideringly. His heart was beating a little faster again, for no reason. ‘Your voice gets soft when you talk about her, did you know that?’

Tony’s smile was bitter and he didn’t meet Steve’s eyes. ‘I love her. I was so pathetically desperate to feel a connection to anyone I almost ruined it by dating her. Luckily, she realised she loved me too much to watch me self-destruct, and she left me for one of my best friends, Happy. Thank god I never slept with him – that would’ve made my wedding toast even more awkward than it already was. Wasn’t for lack of trying, though.’

‘You were at the wedding?’

‘I was man-of-honour.’

Steve chuckled. ‘You’re… you’re different than how I expected.’

‘Good different?’

‘You’re a good man.’

Tony’s eyes darted, nervous. ‘I’m no Captain Rogers. I never did anything heroic.’

Suddenly, Steve was angry again, and it was a single familiar feeling in all of the bizarre maelstrom going on in his chest and head. He reached out and took Tony’s hand for the second time that day, forced him to meet his eyes.

‘Liar.’

‘You don’t know me, Steve.’

‘I’m working on that.’

Jess suddenly appeared at Tony’s elbow with a heavy tray of food. ‘Aw, look at our boys,’ she said. ‘You two are literally too cute.’

Blushing, Steve dropped the older man’s hand, and was rewarded with one of Tony’s patented leers. It was actually very reassuring to see something familiar return to his face.

‘We try,’ he said, and earned himself one of Tony’s grins.

His stomach flipped over, and he thought to himself,

_Aw, crap._


	4. Flight and Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we meet the Dugans, and there are spoilers for the end of 'Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog'...

Tony could literally never remember another time in his life he’d actually been excited to be awake at eight in the goddamned morning.

            But it was so _annoying_ , showing up at midday in the shop only to find that Steve had been for a run, taken Petey to school, come into _Stark Auto_ , worked on Maria for a while and then had settled into Tony’s grease-covered sofa with a sketchbook.

            It had been a theme, for the five days they’d been working together, and Tony was sick of showing up to find Steve smiling that stupid, shy, broken and sincere smile, and suggesting they go visit Jess and Carol.

            He wanted to regain the bloody upper hand, and so he’d gotten out of bed – his butler, Jarvis, had only had to yell at him three times before the whole ‘waking up’ thing had stuck – had taken his coffee intravenously and had stumbled down to the workshop.

            To find Steve had settled in a ray of sunshine in the driveway, with an old car seat to sit on and his sketchbook balanced on his knees, and was obviously waiting for him.

            The guy’s hair was like gold, made red by the lenses of Tony’s sunglasses, and he was damned if he’d ever seen anything so _pretty_.

            Then he was treated to one of those smiles – the ones Tony could swear were just for him, were just the smallest fraction more honest because Tony had seen him at his worst – and his heart hurt, and he thought, _no, that. That’s the prettiest thing_.

            Steve was a _marine_. A goddamned marine. He had no right to be just as pretty as punch.

            ‘You’re early,’ Tony said, oh-so-casually, looming over Steve and trying to catch a glimpse of the drawing the other man quickly covered up.

            ‘Clint and Coulson took Peter to Coney Island.’

            ‘He’s skipping school? That is not responsible brothering.’

            ‘It’s a Saturday, Tony,’ Steve said, chuckling. ‘I didn’t expect you to be up this early.’

            ‘I can get up early any time I want.’

            That got a laugh. A real, honest-to-god laugh. ‘Sure you can. Listen, I wanted to ask you something.’

            Steve rose to his feet with a surprising amount of grace for such a big guy and tucked his sketchbook under his arm.

            Tony would happily have sold one of his stupid million-dollar masterpiece works of art for ten minutes alone with that book.

            ‘You don’t have to come, I mean, it’ll be lame. I mean, not lame, it’ll be fun, but you might think it’s lame because, you know, it’s not billionaire kind of fun, it’s just normal fun, and Mrs Dugan’s kind of catty, and Dugan obviously takes a bit of looking after, and-‘

            ‘You’re rambling.’

            ‘Um. Yeah, I guess I am. Sorry, I… I had a speech. I forgot it.’

            Tony stared at him. ‘You had a speech?’

            ‘You said… negotiation? It’s your thing.’

            ‘What are you trying to negotiate?’

            Steve actually physically shuffled from one foot to the other. It kind of made Tony want to hug him like a teddy bear, which was a ridiculous impulse to have for the very manly, very straight soldiery son of your godmother.

            Did that make them godbrothers? Was that a thing? Holy donuts, had he been imagining – in vivid, technicolor detail – sucking his godbrother’s cock until his eyes rolled back in his head?

            ‘Tony? Are you listening to me? You look kind of… pale.’

            ‘Are we godbrothers?’ Tony asked suddenly. Steve’s eyes widened and he looked reassuringly horrified at the suggestion.

            ‘I really don’t think that’s a thing.’

            ‘Excellent. Good. Just checking. Please, continue with the adorableness.’

            Steve blushed. It was awesome.

            ‘This is why it’s impossible to talk to you.’

            ‘Aw, come on, we talk all day, every day.’

            It was true that it was bizarrely easy to talk to Steve. He didn’t mind the long stretches when Tony’s mind wandered, and despite having never been to college, Steve was really clever. Like, able to keep up with Tony kind of clever, which had to put his IQ at above 150, though when Tony had oh-so-subtly enquired after his SAT scores Steve had looked surprised and had told him that he didn’t remember, but that he thought Peggy knew.

            He was really interested in all of the random nonsense Tony spouted. Really, earnestly interested. Which was ridiculous, because no one was earnest anymore. It was really like Steve was from a different era, not least because the guy seemed incapable of working anything more complex than a Nokia 3310.

            Just yesterday, Tony had spent half an hour pressed up against him, forcibly moving his finger to demonstrate how to use the StarkPad. It was insanity how someone so clever could take so long to grasp something so simple. When he’d finally gotten it working, Steve had deftly used it to log on to YouTube and they’d watched _Dr Horrible_.

            The worst bit had been when Penny had been shot, and Steve had turned to him with huge baby-blue eyes like a kicked puppy and had whispered,‘is she going to be ok?’

            Tony hadn’t known what to say, and he’d had to deal with Steve going all hunched over and tragic. Sometimes, it was all too easy to see the small, scrappy asthmatic Steve had been growing up.

            ‘I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come sightseeing with Dugan and his mom.’

            Broken out of his reverie, Tony wondered absently why Steve was so brightly scarlet. Whenever Steve blushed, he found himself reciting the sexual harassment talk he usually gave to Darcy. The urge to see if it went all the way down was almost unbearable.

            ‘Dugan? Your marine buddy? You told me about him. He’s the guy with the bowler hat.’

            ‘Yeah,’ Steve said, smiling. ‘That’s the one. Do you want to come? I was going to take them to Rockerfeller Centre, maybe Times Square.’

            ‘None of the Carter kids could make it?’

            Steve tilted his head, considering the question. ‘No? I mean, I didn’t ask them.’

            ‘You didn’t ask them,’ Tony repeated like a braindamaged parrot. ‘Wait. Hold the phone. I’m your first choice?’

            Steve shrugged, but he ducked his head, hiding what might’ve been a smile or, maybe, an as-yet-undiscovered degree of clinical blushing.

            ‘It’s ok if you don’t want to, I just thought you’d like Dum-Dum.’

            ‘Hey, hey, I didn’t say I didn’t want to. Don’t go putting words in my mouth, sugarpie. Where are they? I’ll call a car. I’ll call Tina Fey! Do you want to take them to the opera?’

            Steve’s smile was enormous and made Tony feel like going to sit down for a while, so instead he got his (too sexy for mass-production) phone out of his jacket pocket and started organising the kind of day out that would knock an elderly Bostonian woman off her feet.

            ‘I was going to just take them on the subway, they’ve been using it to explore so far-‘

            ‘No, not acceptable. You told me she’s like, a hundred years old. And Dugan’s in a wheelchair, right? The disabled access on most of the inner-city subway stops is just horrific, it’s migraine inducing, it’s ableist. I know, I think I gave a talk about it for some foundation. Either that or Pepper yelled at me about it and I gave a load of money to the city to fix it, I can’t remember.’

            ‘He’d hate special treatment.’

            ‘How about VIP treatment? Steve, I’m Tony Fucking Stark. People expect me to be flamboyantly generous, it’s one of the perks of being me.’

            ‘Your middle name is Edward.’

            ‘Not the point - wait. How did you know that?’

            ‘I pay attention, Tony.’ Steve sighed and ran a hand through his too-neat hair. Tony’s eyes followed the gesture.

He should’ve noticed that the gradual trend of Steve showing up in less and less fancy clothing had reversed.

            Hell, he should’ve noticed that the too-tight jeans were gone.

            ‘I pay attention, too,’ he defended. ‘Like, where are your jeans?’

            Steve glanced down at his chinos, smoothing them self-conciously and tugging a little at the hem of his white t-shirt. ‘In the wash? Is this not ok?’

            ‘It’s fine. It’s good. You’re good.’

            Steve looked at him warily. ‘Okaaay… well, if you’re offering, it might be kinda nice to show Dugan a good time.’

            ‘That’s excellent knews, because there’s a car on its way and I’ve booked tickets to _The Lion King_. Tina says she’s busy, but she’ll leave a signed photo at the reception of The Top of the Rock for us.’

            ‘You did not just seriously do all of that in the last two minutes.’

            ‘Tony Fucking Stark, babydoll.’

            Steve rolled his eyes. ‘I feel like we need to have an intervention about the pet names, Tony.’

            ‘Sure thing, poppet.’ Tony dropped down into the car seat Steve had vacated and petted a patch of ground by his side invitingly. ‘Wait with me, lemondrop?’

            Steve settled cross-legged beside him, the sketchbook in his lap, and Tony gestured to it.

            ‘Peggy is always bragging about how talented you are. Could I see?’

            ‘It’s just… doodles. I get bored if I don’t have something to do with my hands.’

            ‘Pretty please?’

            Tony batted his eyelashes and felt a flush of satisfaction when he managed to drag a dry chuckle out of Steve. He was fully ready – without knowing exactly why he was so committed so quickly to this idea – to spend a great deal of time, energy and money trying to get Steve to laugh. It suited him, and he didn’t do it enough.

            Steve hunched over the pad, flicking covertly through it, and finally settled on a single page, which he held up.

            It was obviously done from memory, because Tony had never seen Peggy look so young. She was sitting, hunched over the small figure of a very thin, very delicate-looking little girl. The only colour anywhere on the page was the red of the girl’s long hair, and of Peggy’s lipstick, and apart from that, their faces weren’t drawn in detail. It was mostly abstract – the energy of it was in the lines of their bodies. The way that the little girl was hunched over, clinging desperately to the woman’s body, all of her turned inwards to face the warmth, to try and steal it. The gentleness of the woman’s posture, the detail of her hand where it was pressed to the back of the girl’s head, holding her close and protecting her.

            ‘It’s Natasha, when she first came to live with us. She didn’t let us take photos for years and years, so I decided to try and draw something from memory,’ Steve said shyly, breaking the silence that was Tony Fucking Stark, rendered speechless. ‘She wouldn’t touch anyone, not even Clint, for months. And finally, Peggy did something. I can’t remember what it was – something small. I think she might’ve gone to Tasha’s school, to talk to her teacher about this bully in her class. Whatever it was, when Tash heard what Peggy had done, she didn’t say anything. She just held onto her, for hours and hours. Neither of them moved, neither of them said anything. They just held on.’

            Rhodey – Tony’s best friend from college – had held him like that, all through the night they’d heard about the accident that had killed Tony’s parents.

            He couldn’t find any words. Slowly, Steve reached across, his hands following the lines of the charcoal, tracing the forms of his mother and sister. Because that was what they were – none of them had been born into that family, but it didn’t make it less of a family. It was a drawing of a mother, holding her daughter and making her believe for the first time in a very long time that everything would be alright.

            ‘It’s beautiful,’ he managed, finally, and felt his skin heat with embarassment at the rawness of his voice. ‘So beautiful, Steve.’

            ‘They’re beautiful,’ Steve agreed, and his fingertips touched Tony’s when he took his hand back. ‘Is that the car you called?’

            In the backseat of the car – the prettiest, swankiest wheelchair access limo on the East Coast - he whipped his phone out again and began typing at a couple hundred words per minute, losing track of time until Steve nudged him with his shoulder and pointed.

            ‘Is that them?’ Tony asked and Steve rolled his eyes.

            ‘You just zoned out for forty-five minutes, Tony. I texted them to meet us outside the hotel.’

            Steve jumped out of the car and Tony watched him through the window, waving and explaining what was happening to a skeptical-looking beefy guy in a chair and an elderly lady who did not look frail.

            She looked a lot more like Dugan took after her. She was six foot if she was an inch and built like a linebacker.

            With a flurry of activity from everyone but Tony – the driver, both Dugans, and Steve overseeing the whole process like a tactical genius-turned-mother hen – everyone was settled in the car and they were taking the scenic tour of the centre of Manhattan.

            Tony noticed that Dugan was glaring at him, so he glared back, and the other man’s mouth twitched with amusement.

            ‘You Cap’s sugardaddy, Stark?’

            ‘Timothy,’ Mrs Dugan hissed, warning.

            Tony grinned. ‘Timothy?’

            Steve put an arm around Tony’s shoulders, mimicking the way Tony had presented him to Jess and Carol a few days before.

            ‘Tony’s dad and Peggy were in the war together, Dum-Dum. She’s his godmother, and he’s a swell guy. I wanted to just take you guys out sightseeing, but he wanted us to do it in style.’ Steve’s hand squeezed his shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be comforting and was mostly kind of… bruising. ‘I think the two of you will really get along.’

            ‘So where do we stand on the sugardaddy thing, Cap?’

            ‘Still working on the paperwork, soldier,’ Tony snapped. It was one thing to act like a dick to him – he almost always deserved it. But it was not okay to call Steve a hooker. ‘You want to be considered, you better get in line. Besides, you met Steve? In what universe wouldn’t he demand I make an honest woman out of him?’

            ‘Woman?’ Steve asked, ribs shaking with barely supressed laughter.

            ‘Man, sorry. Very… man. I’m being nice, Steve, and he’s being mean. You heard him!’

            ‘Come on, Stark, don’t go telling tales to Mom,’ Dugan said, half a smile on his face.

            ‘Why am I always the wife?’ Steve asked, sounding bemused.

            ‘The point is, I am being mister A-star friend, here. I texted Tina Fey for this grumpy fucker!’

            ‘Language!’ Steve and Mrs Dugan snapped, simultaneously, even as Dugan leant forward and hissed, ‘wait. You got Tina’s digits?’

            ‘What kind of charming billionaire d’you think I am? Yeah, I got her number. She said she’s too busy to get lunch with us – _at Le Bernardin_ – but she’s hooked me up with a signed headshot. Which I was going to give to a certain blond guy’s best army buddy, in order to forever cement our bromance, but if you don’t want it…’

            Dugan settled back in his seat, inspected Tony from head to foot, and then grinned.

            ‘Hey, buddy,’ he said pleasantly, and Tony slumped with relief even as Steve patted his shoulder reassuringly.

            Steve still had his arm around him. It was really, really nice, and Tony was already coming up with complicated plans to distract him from ever moving it again.

            ‘Awesome. Look, Steve, Mrs Dugan. We’re best friends, now.’

            ‘ _Le Bernardin_? I read about that in my guidebook. Isn’t it… expensive, Mister Stark?’ Mrs Dugan asked delicately, her eyes impressively calculating.

            Tony liked her already. ‘My treat, Mrs Dugan. After all, what’s the point of having money if you can’t spend it on fine food and fine women?’

            ‘We still talkin’ bout Steve?’ Dum-Dum enquired.

            ‘I resent that comment,’ Steve said pleasantly.

            ‘Please,’ graciously announced Mrs Dugan, ‘call me Dulcima.’

            Tony took great pleasure in watching Dum-Dum’s expression of horror as he leant forward and kissed Dulcima’s offered hand, winking at him.

            ‘Ma, your name’s _Dulcima_?’

            ‘What, you thought I was Mrs _Mom_ Dugan? Get your head out your backside, Timmy, it’s not a fashion accessory.’

            It was… nice. It was nice, standing awkwardly in the Hershey’s store in Times Square while Steve piled bags of _Kisses_ in his arms and helped Dulcima Dugan find a suitably orange t-shirt to buy.

            It was nice when Steve, with chocolate at the corner of his mouth, handed him a bobble-headed Lady Liberty, ‘for the workshop’, and looked so pleased with himself that it really didn’t matter that it was a $2 piece of junk being given to a guy who spent a hundred times that on coffee every week.

            It was nice, trying on ladies’ perfumes in Macy’s with Dugan, trying to find one for his girl back in Boston. (‘Come on, man, it’s got Natalie Portman in the ad. That mean’s it’s hella classy.’ ‘For shame, Dugan – I’m going to pretend you didn’t just chose anything other than _Chanel_.’)

            It was really nice, figuring out early that Steve had a strange blind spot when it came to eating fish, and watching him fight with his courage before trying some of Tony’s (sustainably caught) tuna steak. Then, watching his eyes widen, and letting him finish it while Tony ordered three more dishes he thought Steve would like. For science.

            It was the nicest, standing at the Top of the Rock as the sun was starting to consider going down, staining the sky red and gold and blue.

            ‘It’s… colder than I thought it would be,’ Steve murmured, leaning next to Tony on the viewing platform, close enough to steal some of his body heat.

            ‘Do you want to go back inside? I saw a giftshop, from what I’ve seen today you have an irrational love of those.’

            ‘Not irrational. I like… touristy things. I like thinking that people want to take a little bit of New York away with them, because they liked it. Haven’t you ever had that?’ He turned to smile at Tony, whose stomach flip-flopped like a bad movie franchise. ‘Haven’t you ever loved something so much that knowing other people love it too just makes you feel good?’

            Tony found himself thinking about Peter, saying _he’s Steve. He’s super nice._ The way Peggy had lit up like a freaking Christmas tree when she’d seen him. Dugan’s protectiveness, and how Steve instinctively ducked whenever he was around Erskine so the old man could pinch his cheek.

            With perfect clarity, he stared at Steve’s stupid, smiling face – he still had bloody chocolate on his mouth, which was absolutely why Tony couldn’t take his eyes off it – and thought, _aw, crap._

            It had only been two weeks. This was not – _repeat, NOT_ – happening.

            ‘You gonna be a gentleman and give me your scarf?’

            Without thinking, Tony unwound it and pulled it tight around Steve’s throat. ‘You love New York so much, you should know to never dress for the way the weather is in the morning.’

            Steve held the scarf – it was a rich, deep red, one of Tony’s favourites – up to his nose. Tony tried hard not to find it adorable that his nose was cold.

            ‘Thank you for coming, Tony. They’ve had a really good time. So have I.’

            ‘Yeah, well, Dugan’s a dick, but he’s a pretty nice guy, so… it was my pleasure.’ He turned back to look at the skyline, rubbed the scar on his chest. ‘You defended me against him. You called me a _swell guy_.’

            ‘You are. More or less.’ They listened to the noise of the city in companionable silence for a while, Steve playing with the scarf, running it through his fingers. ‘Can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer.’

            ‘Sure thing, Cap, fire away.’

            ‘You said you have a heart condition, and you’re always rubbing at that scar, when you’re not covering it up… is there anything I need to know? Like, keep you away from microwaves, or special CPR, or…’

            Tony pressed his hand over the scar. ‘Nah, it looks a lot worse than it is. Which… isn’t saying much, I guess, ‘cause it looks really bad.’

            ‘We’ve all got scars, Tony. I don’t think it’s ugly.’

            ‘You haven’t seen the whole thing. I was full of shrapnel. Yinsen… he didn’t have the tools to be careful. He had to bust my chest right open, right down the sternum. He used an old car battery to keep my heart beating. When I got back, I designed a new kind of pacemaker for it – it’s completely revolutionary, when I told the members of the board I wanted it cheap enough for uninsured people to afford they cried – and it’s fine, now.’

            ‘You touch it, all the time.’

            ‘Yeah, well. When you’ve been awake and felt your heart stop beating, you start to check up on it every now and again.’

            Very suddenly, Steve turned and punched the wall.

            Tony gaped at him, hunched over and cradling a badly grazed hand, and then swore and grabbed his scarf off of Steve’s neck, started wrapping it around his knuckles.

            ‘No,’ Steve whined softly, ‘not the scarf.’

            ‘Well, you should’ve thought of that before going all hulk-man and maiming yourself. What the hell was that?’

            Steve was quiet, watching Tony wrap the scarf over and over around his hand. When he finally spoke, his voice was a shadow of the way he’d spoken the day Tony had found him hyperventilating on a sandwich run.

            ‘I’m so sick of feeling powerless. I know it doesn’t make sense – I didn’t even know you then – but I should’ve been there. I should’ve protected you.’

            ‘I’m a big boy, Cap. I don’t need a hero – I thought I told you that.’

            ‘I know. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to be looked after.’

            Tony didn’t have the words to answer that. He found himself speechless far more often than he’d like around this man – he never knew what to say in the face of Steve’s unbearable honesty. He’d never known anyone so quick to open himself up and make himself vulnerable. It – irrationally – made Tony want to be honest, too.

            Which was ridiculous. He was never honest. But a dishonest man wouldn’t say the words that he found were forcing themselves out of his mouth.

            ‘I’ll look after you. I think you need it just as much.’

            He didn’t see it coming, though maybe he should’ve, from the way Steve’s face softened with something unnamed and prettier than the sunset. With a quick pull on Tony’s arm, he was pressed against Steve, the taller man’s arms wrapped tight around him and holding on for dear life.

            They were in a relatively private part of the top viewing platform, and it was easy to just stand there, letting Steve hold him as if there was something trying to drag him away. After a moment of tension, Tony found himself relaxing, instinctively reaching to where Steve’s head was resting on his shoulder and carding his fingers through soft blond hair.

            He’d wanted to do that for a while, now, and it was just as fine as he had imagined it would be. Steve was so warm, his breath tickling where it rushed past his lips, running over Tony’s collarbone and away into the darkening sky.

            ‘You’re going to be ok. You know that, right? You’re going to be fine.’

            ‘You can’t know that for sure.’ One of Tony’s hands felt the words, rumbling in Steve’s ribs. He felt them hot against his neck, imagined he could feel Steve’s lips move.

            ‘No, but I always wanted someone to say it to me, when I came back. No one ever did, but I wanted to hear it.’

            ‘You’re going to be ok, too, Tony. I promise.’

            Tony let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and absently scritched his fingers against Steve’s scalp. ‘Thanks, Cap.’

            ‘That feels nice.’

            Tony hummed in agreement, felt his eyes start to drift shut. He didn’t really care about the sunset anymore, and he was trying hard to use his photographic memory to hold on to every single thing about holding Steve.

            It was pathetic, but if this was the only chance he ever got, he was fucking taking it.

            He held on tight, and knew that there was no way he was going to be ok, because he was falling.

            And he knew that Steve wouldn’t be there to catch him.


	5. Iron Man Saves the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn why they call Tony the Iron Man, and Steve receives his first birthday present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a warning: I do mention serious illness in this chapter, including some discussion of chemotherapy. Please don't read ahead if you think that might upset you.

‘Is Tony in yet?’ Steve asked, steering his brother with one hand and opening the reception door with the other.

            Darcy looked up from where she appeared to be making some kind of collage. Did she ever actually do any work? She seemed to consider saying something lawsuit causing, but at the last minute noticed Peter and frowned at him instead.

            ‘You have a kid. I’m not sure I’m down with being anyone’s step-mom, Tightbuns.’

            ‘He’s my little brother,’ Steve explained, at the same moment Peter said in a scandalised voice, ‘ _Tightbuns_?’

            ‘Therefore we will take care, Jaws, not to traumatise the kid,’ Tony’s said, coming into the reception from the workshop and rubbing his hands on a rag.

            Steve’s mouth went dry and then immediately flooded, because he looked… dirty. Smears of grease up his strong arms and one on his jaw Steve had to fight the urge to rub away with his thumb, his vest riding up and his jeans riding low to expose the smooth crescents of his hipbones.

            He grinned at Steve, then at Peter, and Steve found himself feeling a little dazed. It wasn’t an unfamiliar reaction around Tony – neither was the blush that rose up his neck, hot and uncomfortable.

            It was completely insane. He’d persuaded Peter – which actually hadn’t been hard – to spend the day helping him and Tony in the workshop, because he had been terrified of having to actually talk to Tony like a real person.

            How were you supposed to talk to someone, when yesterday they’d made your newly disabled friend laugh for the first time since his accident? When he’d made a tired, sad old lady on her very last vestige of strength feel pretty and excited? When he’d held you close and told you words you hadn’t realised you’d needed to hear.

            How were you supposed to just go back to normal, to peacefully working side-by-side like good friends, when you’d slept with his cologne-scented red scarf wrapped around your neck and you knew just how his fingers felt smoothing your hair?

            It hadn’t even been two weeks, and he shouldn’t be feeling like this. Like he didn’t know what solid ground felt like anymore, and he couldn’t stop sketching the guy’s stupid, beautiful face. His hands, his shoulders, the outline of the scar covering his heart. He shouldn’t feel simultaneously terrified out of his mind and impossibly relieved whenever he saw Tony smile at him.

            ‘Hey there, big guy. Didn’t expect you today,’ Tony said cheerfully.

            Steve opened his mouth and shut it again when Tony stooped to give Peter a high-five. Because _obviously_ Tony hadn’t been talking to him.

            ‘Steve wanted me to see Maria. She was my great-grandfather’s.’ Peter frowned. ‘Why is she called Maria? Why is she a she at all?’

            ‘You’ll understand when you’re older,’ Tony said, and Darcy snorted, returning to her work. ‘Hey, trouble, what you got there?’

            Steve glanced down at the pair of takeaway coffees he was carrying – he would’ve thought Tony, of all people, would know coffee from Jess and Carol’s café.

            Then Darcy held up her poster-thing, and he realised that yet again, Tony hadn’t been talking to him.

            He scowled at the poster and tried hard not to pout.

            It was vividly pink – presumably to match the décor of the workshop itself – and covered in sparkles. Glitter letters spelled out the words, _Iron Man Saves the World_.

            ‘What’s this?’ Tony asked, bemused, taking it from her. Steve managed to find the guts to stand next to him and look down at it.

            It was actually a very elabourate frame for a three-page magazine-style article, detailing the story of how Anthony Stark – son of the great inventor and war hero Howard Stark and socialite-activist Maria Stark – had been captured in Afghanistan, and on his return had ceased all his company’s weapons manufacture. It explained how he had revolutionised the world of clean, sustainable energy with his ‘arc-reactor technology’, which was in part inspired by the game-changing pacemaker he’d designed for himself. The journalist gushed over the work the _Maria Stark Foundation_ did, providing scholarships for underprivileged kids, and how Tony himself gave his name and his money to a network of carefully selected charities so wide that it was almost impossible to work out the amount he gave away every year.

            ‘Why _Iron Man?_ ’ Steve asked softly, reading every word for the second time. Tony had yet to move, and he seemed to be barely breathing.

            ‘It’s the name of the pacemaker,’ he explained hoarsely. ‘It’s an Integrated-Rhythm Organ Neo-support.’

            ‘I liked it,’ Darcy said happily. ‘It’s the first article that doesn’t go on some rant about how you’ll sleep with anything that moves – and it’s in the _Times_. It’s nice, right? I’m going to add some of these photos round the edge, for added classiness. And more glitter. Much more glitter.’

            Tony handed the poster carefully to Steve, who traced with his fingers the page that was just images of Tony. Tony, giving a talk to what looked like a 6th grade shop class and very obviously - from his expression of glee - about to make something blow up. Tony, with his arm round a beautiful redheaded woman – Pepper - holding up a tiny framed electronic device with the words _proof that Tony Stark has a heart_ at the bottom of the frame.

            Tony, too thin and with gaunt circles under his eyes, sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating a cheeseburger the day of his first press conference after coming back from the desert.

            ‘Darcy, what am I looking at?’ Tony’s voice filtered in, and Steve looked up to where Darcy, Peter and Tony were all looking at a pile of printouts of photographs.

            ‘It’s become this internet thing,’ Darcy explained. ‘All the people who get an I.R.O.N implant through MediCare – or through that grant thing you and Pepper set up – when they walk for the first time after the surgery, they get their families to take photos of them dressed as superheroes.’

            ‘Why?’ Peter asked interestedly.

            ‘Cause they feel strong again, Pete,’ Steve said. Tony looked very pale, and without thinking, Steve put an arm around his waist, felt him sway.

            ‘They… they do that?’

            ‘Sure. These are just the best ones – there are thousands of them. There’s a _tumblr_ for them.’

            Tony stared at them, and Steve followed his gaze. Just on the top of the pile, there were three photos that made Steve’s chest hurt.

            A middle-aged black man, with four small kids all sitting on his hospital bed, dressed as Superman and grinning like he’d won the lottery, holding up a sign that said, ‘ _January 5 th, walked down the corridor on my own_.’

            A Middle-Eastern lady in a sparkling blue headscarf, beaming, holding up a baby unmistakeably dressed as a tiny Jedi. Words across the photo said, _I’m Moe, and I took my first steps today._

            A girl with brown hair and huge green eyes, wearing a white wedding dress with a long red silk cape attached. An impossibly proud-looking groom stood next to her, one arm supporting her, the other hand holding up a sign that said, _we walked down the ailse together._

            ‘Oh, God,’ Tony whispered, and leant against Steve, hard. ‘That’s… amazing. That’s so amazing.’

            ‘You’ve saved lives.’ Steve fought the urge to press his lips against Tony’s forehead. He was fighting back tears and barely knew why. ‘Darcy, this is a really amazing gift.’

            Darcy smiled sweetly at him, and for once Steve didn’t feel a rush of pure, unadulterated terror. ‘My pleasure, Tightbuns. I love my Tony – it’s super awesome that this article will show everyone else why they should love him, too.’

            _Haven’t you ever loved something so much that knowing other people love it too just makes you feel good?_

            ‘Super awesome,’ Peter echoed. ‘Check it, Steve, this guy’s Spiderman.’

            Steve grinned, and passed Tony one of the coffees. Tony looked up at him like a man shell-shocked.

            ‘Did you know about this?’

            ‘Nope, but it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? All of these people get to do just what you did.’

            ‘What’s that?’

            ‘Start over, fresh. They can be with the people they love. It’s an amazing gift you’ve given the world.’

            ‘It doesn’t make up for all the terrible things I’ve made. That my father made.’

            ‘Try telling that to that baby’s mother. To that woman’s husband, or that man’s kids.’ Steve stared hard at his coffee and tried not to let his hands shake. ‘You’ve never had the press sing your praises before, have you?’

            ‘Not like this. Mostly just “look at the new technology and guns, aren’t they shiny”.’ Tony took a sip of his coffee and closed his eyes, savoring it. ‘You brought me coffee. You’re beautiful.’

            ‘You talking to me or the coffee?’

            ‘You, obviously. You’re also delicious – don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Come, Petey, let’s leave Darcy to the one adorable thing she’s ever done and quite possibly the last and go see Steve’s baby.’

            They showed Peter how the bike fit together, Steve’s designs for the final product, and set him down with a load of vintage parts to clean and polish as Steve worked on the bike and Tony sat next to him on yet another old car seat, doing something inexplicable and complex on a StarkPad.

            ‘How can you be here, all the time, and still be the guy in that article?’ Steve asked, after a couple of hours, wiping sweat off his forehead on the back of his arm.

            Tony looked up, apparently surprised to find there was a world outside of whatever the hell it was he was doing. ‘I do all the charity stuff in the evening, mostly. It’s boring as hell without alcohol, but sometimes I get to meet cool people. Pepper took over as CEO ages ago, she does most of the heavy stuff. I tend to just work on what interests me, and I drop it off with R&D, let them work the non-existent bugs out.’

            ‘What are you doing now?’

            ‘Revolutionising how we dispose of non-biodegradeable plastics. What are you doing?’

            ‘Listening to appaling music and trying like hell to rebuild a fifty-year-old engine that’s pretty much completely rusted through.’

            Tony looked scandalised. ‘Just because you don’t like anything more recent than the Beatles doesn’t mean you can go hating on my emo angry girl indie music.’

            ‘Any type of music that has four describing words is too complicated. I know – I’m Loki’s brother.’

            ‘Yeah. What’s that guy’s deal?’

            Steve grinned at the question many had asked and no one had ever properly answered. ‘He’s the publicist for this little-known band I swear you’ll be unable to turn on a radio without hearing by next summer. The guy’s got a silver tongue.’

            ‘Mental image I didn’t need. Thanks.’

            Steve chuckled and watched a faint blush rise up Tony’s neck. ‘For a self-professed playboy, you’re a little squeamish.’

            ‘I hadn’t known you for fifteen minutes when I invited you to hate-fuck me into a wall, Steve,’ Tony said tersely, his eyes flitting away in a now-familiar gesture. He always did it when he didn’t really want to see the reaction he was expecting to whatever he’d just said – when he was testing someone.

            ‘That was an invite?’ Steve asked, watching him.

            ‘Whatcha talkin’ bout?’ Peter said, dumping himself bodily into Steve’s lap with a _clink_ caused by the metal in the pouch of the kid’s hoodie. ‘Grownup boring stuff?’

            ‘Robots, explosions and candy, kid,’ Tony assured him, looking anywhere but up. ‘How’d you like your day with Hawk and Coulson yesterday?’

            ‘It was fun. Hawk kept giving me cotton candy and then hiding, so Coulson would have to chase me. I threw up blue. It was awesome.’

            ‘For someone who watches so much _Super Nanny_ , Phil’s surprisingly panicky when you leave him alone with kids,’ Steve explained, and stood, easily tucking Peter like a football under his arm. ‘Come on, Tony, we’re going to the place across the road for food.’

            ‘ _NOMS_ ,’ Peter yelled, squirming happily.

            ‘I’m cool, just get me anything.’

            ‘Nope, no dice. You’re coming with us, and we’re letting the girls fill Peter with so much falafel he passes out. Come on.’

            Tony looked up at the two of them, finally meeting Steve’s eyes. ‘You should just leave me.’

            ‘Not going to happen.’

            ‘Fine.’ He blew out a weirdly long sigh. ‘You’re a stubborn bastard.’

            ‘That’s why we get along so well. Kindred spirits and all.’ They walked across the road, Peter still tucked under Steve’s arm and wriggling pointlessly. ‘That thing with the article really threw you, huh?’

            Tony shrugged and held the door open for the two of them. ‘It’s weird. You’re right, I’m not used to it. I don’t know how to deal with being the good guy.’

            ‘It’s easy. You just smile and wave and keep doing good things.’

            ‘You, of all people, should know that’s never as easy as it sounds. I keep trying to do the right thing, but it’s… not easy.’

            At that, Tony gave him a look Steve couldn’t comprehend, but which took his breath away, and Peter managed to scramble free of his hold.

            It was so sad. Steve wanted him – wanted to stop him looking like that ever again – so badly he could taste it.

            He wanted to pull Tony’s shirt over his head, press his own heart against the place where Tony’s beat against all odds. He wanted to use lips and tongue and teeth to trace and memorise the path of each individual scar, wanted to know them better than anything. He wanted the taste of the skin on the inner slope of his knee, wanted the sounds he’d make when Steve wrapped his hand around his cock and told him how gorgeous he was, how strong.

            He wanted to swallow those sounds – swallow every cry, every gasp for breath or for mercy – down and let them make him warm again. Tony was always so warm. Steve wanted to steal it, wanted to make it hotter and hotter until the fever broke.

            Except that he was an ex-marine who’d so completely failed his psych evaluation that they’d pretty much retired him, and Tony was… a genius, a hero, an icon. Steve hadn’t even been to college. Tony had asked him about his SAT scores, and he hadn’t even known what they’d been – he’d always known he wasn’t going to college, so he’d given the envelope to Peg so he wouldn’t have to know. He wished they’d been impressive enough that he could be the kind of man Tony would want to take out, want to fuck and love and be partners with.

            It had only been two weeks, he reminded himself, sitting and watching Tony and Peter play _Scrabble_. It wasn’t fair that in two weeks, he’d realised that he’d been waiting his whole life for this man, this man who absolutely could not give what Steve needed from him. Steve didn’t deserve him, and… and he didn’t even know if Tony liked men. He flirted with everyone and everything; that was just how he hid himself from them. It gave him the upper hand.

            He’d loved Pepper, who was capable and educated… and a woman. All of the things Steve couldn’t offer, really, and wasn’t that just peachy.

            The night before, after he’d gotten back from his day trip with Tony, he’d found Thor on the sofa eating caramel ice cream and watching _Adventure Time_. He’d grabbed a spoon and settled beside his massive labradoodle of a brother.

            ‘YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WISH, NOW, BROTHER. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT?’

            ‘Indoor voices, Thor,’ Steve had said, but hadn’t really meant it – it was just reflex. He’d never minded Thor’s booming – it was cheerful. ‘I… I was thinking about maybe applying to art school.’

            ‘THAT WOULD BE AN EXCELLENT CHOICE. YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARILY TALENTED, STEVEN. IT WOULD BE A SIN TO WASTE SUCH A GIFT.’

            ‘I’ve wanted the same thing ever since Peggy took me in, really, and now… now that I could actually go after it, it seems so impossible.’

            ‘OH? WHAT IS THAT?’ Thor had waved his spoon to help punctuate the question, and Steve had found himself wiping icecream off his eyebrow.

            ‘A family, I guess. A home full of art and decorated just the way I like it, and a whole load of kids, like we were. Kids who need a home.’

            ‘AND A LOVER, WITH WHOM TO SHARE YOUR LOVING HEART AND HEARTH?’

            Steve had stared at the TV and had squeezed his hand around the makeshift, red scarf bandage. ‘Yeah. I’d like someone to fight with, and make up with, and experience the whole messed-up lot of it with. Like you and Jane.’

            Thor had gone misty-eyed at the mention of his long-time girlfriend, and had gone off on a long soliloqy about her various transcendent beauties.

            Tony would be good with kids. He was hyperactive and attention deficit, but he’d been incredibly patient showing Steve how to work the StarkPad.

            Steve wasn’t an idiot – he’d picked it up almost immediately, but Tony had been warm and smelled like coffee and soap beside him. Just one more deception to add to the ever-growing list.

            The doorbell of the shop rang, and Steve looked up to find his brother smiling shyly, doing a little awkward two-hand wave of his hands.

            ‘Bruce,’ Steve said, surprised, ‘what are you doing here?’

            Tony and Peter looked up from their game and waved. Well, Peter waved. Tony made some weird two-handed heart with his fingers, then blew Bruce a kiss.

            Bruce settled down opposite Steve at the table and when Jess came over he gave her one of his rare, truly sincere smiles and asked, ‘hello, is this where my mother always buys just best jasmine tea in the city?’

            Jess chuckled. ‘You must be Bruce Banner-Carter, PhD, soon to be MD. And it’s from London, so I guess it’s the best tea in the world. Coming right up – I’ll bring you some manuka honey for it, too. Steve, I’ll get you some with toast for that sweet tooth.’

            Bruce watched her go, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘She’s lovely.’

            ‘You love anyone who brings you tea.’

            ‘That must be true. I love you more than anything, and you brought me my body weight in tea when I was writing my first thesis.’

            Steve smiled, and felt Bruce follow the movement. When both Clint and Tasha had moved in with Peg, Steve had bristled, hating having to share the only home he could remember. He’d been mean and hostile in his defense of his fragile new family, and only when he’d seen Tasha and Peggy the way he’d drawn them had he accepted that he had to share his mother with a new brother and sister.

            Bruce had been so angry as a teenager. He’d avoided all of them for the first few weeks he’d been living with them, hadn’t even spoken to Peggy.

            But the moment Steve had properly met him, he’d understood him. Even now, he didn’t really understand that connection, but it was as if he and Bruce had always been brothers. They both had anger and peace at constant bloody war inside their chests; they both had something they loved from their pasts baying at their heels. For Bruce, it had been his childhood sweetheart, Betty. For Steve, it had been his. Bucky.

            Jess brought them their tea, and they watched Tony lose to Peter at _Scrabble_ in companionable silence.

            ‘Why are you here, Bruce?’

            ‘I finished my paper, and I knew you and Pete would be here. I’d like to get to know Tony a little better. He must be an extraordinary man.’

            ‘You read the article in _The Times_?’

            ‘No. He must be extraordinary, because you look at him like he is.’

            Bruce serenely took a sip of tea and ignored Steve’s jaw working slowly up and down as he tried and failed to find words.

            ‘Do you think he’s really losing, or he’s letting Peter win?’

            ‘He’s absolutely losing. Tony is surprisingly terrible at spelling – if it was _Monopoly_ it would be another matter.’

            As if to prove the point, Peter cried, ‘there’s no _c_ in _lynx,_ Tony!’

            ‘I’m approaching it creatively!’

            ‘How are you doing, Steve? I haven’t had a chance to ask you, not properly. And don’t lie to me.’

            Steve thought about it. Bruce – and Tony, apparently – was one of the few people in the world Steve had trouble lying to. Something about Bruce inspired confidence and honesty. It was why he’d decided, after going through a bout of chemo a couple years before, to give up physics and train to be a doctor.

            It had torn Steve apart, being at war while Bruce was going through diagnosis and treatment. He – and all the other guys in his platoon – had shaved their heads in sympathy and had filmed it, sent it too him to cheer him up when he was feeling gross and depressed.

            He was over a year in remission, now, but the slight edge of fragility hadn’t left him. And all of them loved Bruce best, which was why Peggy was always bringing him tea, and Thor and Clint kidnapped him once a week, brought him home and made him sleep and eat.

            ‘It’s hard. But… it’s getting a little easier. I don’t feel like I’m suffocating so often. I don’t feel so cold all the time, and I can sleep. I can eat.’

            ‘Have you been talking to anyone?’

            ‘Tony. I didn’t mean to, but he… he found me, when I was having an episode. Just outside here. He forced me to calm down. He made me breathe.’

            Bruce nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. I guess if anyone knows how to deal with post-traumatic stress, it would be him.’ He reached out, touched gentle healer’s hands to Steve’s white knuckles on his teacup. ‘You should ask him out.’

            Steve snorted. ‘That’s stupid.’

            ‘You’d be stupid not to. He never stops looking at you, Steve. Even when the two of you were at each other’s throats, he kept staring at you.’

            ‘I’m a puzzle. He’ll get bored.’

            ‘I don’t think so. I really don’t. I just… you’re my brother, Steve. I knew that the second I met you. I’d walk through fire to get you a cannoli – I want to see you happy. Last night, after you got back from doing touristy stuff, you were happy.’

            ‘You weren’t there.’ Steve thought about that sentence. ‘Why would there be a cannoli on the other side of the fire?’

            ‘Clint told me all about your “lovesick puppy face”. You tried to get him to watch _Sleepless in Seattle_.’

            ‘I love that movie.’ Tony dropped like a ton of bricks into Bruce’s lap and gave him a loud, smacking kiss on the side of his face. ‘Are we talking early 90s Tom Hanks? Because I have some thoughts to contribute. Also: why are you here?’

            Bruce raised his eyebrows at Steve, who gave him a look that he hoped communicated, _just because we both like stupid (awesome) 90s romcoms does not mean I should ask him out_.

            ‘Because you’ve been holding my big brother hostage, and I wanted to see him. And because… I was going to ask you if _Stark Medical_ takes interns.’

            ‘Big brother? He’s younger than you.’

            ‘I came to Peggy first, so I’m the big brother,’ Steve explained, putting down his tea so that he could open his arms to Peter.

            Ever since Peggy had adopted Peter – three years ago, when he was six – he’d been a very touchy-feely kid with people he liked. With people he trusted. Peggy had said, once, that she thought the great-aunt who’d passed away and left him to the foster system had been a big hugger.

            Steve secretly loved it, and dreaded the day Pete would be too big to cuddle, or the day he would be too grown up. He kind of hoped the second one would come a long while after the first.

            After all, Thor had never grown out of the cuddling stage, and he was rougly the size of a barge. Neither, apparently, had Tony, if the ridiculous way he was petting Bruce was any indication.

            ‘If they don’t do internships, I will make them do one, for you, pooky. We’re working on I.R.O.N devices to work in other organs – hearts and kidneys, mostly, though they’re working on a liver one in R&D. One of them said they had to do it fast, ‘cause I’d need it in a couple years.’

            ‘Don’t say that,’ Steve snapped, and Tony gave him a smug smile.

            ‘I’m super-duper healthy now, apple pie. I drink kale smoothies and do thai boxing. My body is a temple.’

            But there was something in his voice; an apology, maybe, a reassurance that he was fine, and he slipped off of Bruce’s lap and into the empty chair beside Steve, stole his tea and took a sip.

            ‘This tastes like grass,’ he complained.

            ‘No. Kale smoothies taste like grass.’

            ‘You fickle, fickle man. And after I let you suck on my smoothie straw.’ Bruce made a choking sound and Tony grinned slyly at him. ‘You would’ve gotten the chance, if you hadn’t abandoned me to write your stupid paper. I would’ve shown you the world, Brucie. Shining, shimmering, splenda.’

            ‘Splendid,’ Peter corrected. He now had possession of the toast Jess had brought and was dipping it enthusiastically in manuka honey. ‘Splenda is what Peggy puts in coffee.’

            Steve found himself laughing, helplessly, his face feeling strange from holding a smile for so long, and when he looked up Pete and Bruce were chuckling, too, both of them eating toast and honey.

            Tony was just watching him with a dumbstruck expression.

            ‘You ok?’ Steve asked, wiping a tear away.

            ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Very good. Excellent.’

            ‘Because saying something three times always makes it more believable, Tony.’

            ‘Leave me alone, I’m having a moment here.’ He smiled and awkwardly touched the tips of his fingers to Steve’s arm in a sort of poke. ‘You should laugh more. It suits you.’

            Steve opened his mouth to respond and was cut off by Peter crying, ‘I’m not telling you what I got him! You’ll just steal my idea.’

            ‘Not telling what? Who’s not telling? I want to know what isn’t being told!’ Tony announced, and to emphasise his point dipped his finger into the honey pot.   

            Steve watched in horror as Tony drew his hand away, turning it and cupping the other beneath it to catch as much of the sticky fluid as he could. He watched Tony raise it to his mouth, and with great delicacy, touch the tip of his pointy, pink tongue to the tip of his finger.

            Then watched him moan like he was starring in a cheap porno and suck it into his mouth, eyes fluttering shut with pleasure.

            ‘Steve? Steve, did you just hear a word I said?’ Bruce’s voice filtered in from somewhere far away and Steve shifted, suddenly very uncomfortable in his seat.

            ‘I’ve never seen Stevie go _that_ colour before,’ Peter said interestedly.

            ‘No. That’s because that particular colour of blush is not generally available to the public,’ Bruce said wryly. ‘But watch how we take ruthless advantage of our big brother, Petey. So, Steve, you’re ok with that plan?’

            ‘Hmm?’ Steve blinked, and found that Tony’s eyes had opened and were looking directly into his, that stupid finger still between his lips. ‘Yes? I mean, yeah, that sounds good.’

            Steve didn’t have a color like those eyes anywhere in his art supplies. He knew, because he’d spent a good part of the last two weeks trying desperately to find a brown warm enough, clever enough. Like old oak furniture and soft, supple leather and… those were not romantic things to be comparing his eyes to. Dirt, maybe? Like… really healthy dirt, the kind you use to grow roses and other plants that are picky about where they grow.

            It was really a very good thing he could sketch, because aparently _poet_ was not a career option.

            Tony beamed at him and – thanks be to all the dark gods – removed the stupid finger from between his stupid teeth. ‘Really?’ he said softly.

            Oh. Well, whatever Steve had just agreed to, if it made Tony wear his _I-can’t-believe-you-think-I’m-a-decent-person_ face, Steve would absolutely do it.

            ‘Absolutely,’ he said firmly, and Peter let out a squeal of excitement.

            ‘Can we have gold cake? Like, a cake made from gold? Is that what rich people eat?’

            Tony’s smile turned even brighter. ‘We’ll have whatever type of cake is Steve’s favourite.’

            ‘Ice cream cake,’ Peter and Bruce said in chorus. Peter added, ‘duh. His birthday’s the Fourth of July.’

            ‘Cake?’ Steve echoed like a moron. Bruce leant forward and patted his hand.

            ‘You’ve agreed to let Tony throw you a birthday party at _Stark Towers_. A Carter party, in a building so full of breakable, priceless objects that our very presence in the lobby will raise the insurance premiums.’

            ‘Ice cream cake,’ Tony repeated, something weird in his voice, as if he were committing it to memory. ‘What other stuff is his favorite, kid? Tell me and I’ll get you some of Carol’s banana tempura.’

            Steve wanted to warn Peter against bribery, but then he remembered that Peter was the youngest of seven emotionally compromised kids, and that he knew pretty much all there was to know about manipulating and accepting bribes from grownups.

            Steve was pretty sure Phil Coulson had given the kid a DIY multitool in exchange for information about Clint.

            Peter fished his StarkPad out of his bag and started showing Tony what looked suspiciously like a spreadsheet.

            Bruce shifted, pulled something out of his jacket pocket. ‘I know it’s early,’ he said softly, ‘but I didn’t really want an audience like there’ll be at your party. Happy birthday, Stevie.’

            Steve took the small box from Bruce, and the card which had obviously been made by the kids at the carehome the Carters all volunteered at when they had the time. He recognised the art from some of the techniques he’d taught them, including glitter, macaroni and stilllife – there was a small drawing of a fruit bowl, and another of Steve with straw-thatch hair wearing red and blue. It weighed a ton, and Steve knew it was going in the box of precious things he kept under his bed, along with his adoption papers and Bucky’s wristwatch.

            ‘It’s stupid. I was going to get you a real present, but I thought…’

            Steve opened it. It was an old jewellery box lined with a sort of plasticy wool, and in the centre was a curling lock of brown hair.

            ‘I know it killed you, not being there for me,’ Bruce explained. Neither of them noticed how quiet Tony and Peter had gone. ‘It’s… it’s the first big clump of hair I lost all in one go. It’s when I knew the chemo was starting to work, but before it started to really make me sick, and I’d just been on Skype to you, and… I kept it for you. Because you were there, in every way that counts.’

            Very carefully, Steve set his birthday present down on the café table, stood, and dragged Bruce up out of his seat and into a bone-crushing bear hug.

            From a million miles away, he heard Peter ask, ‘are you crying, Tony?’

            ‘Don’t be stupid, I’ve just lost both my contact lenses at the same time.’

            And Steve was laughing, and holding on to his brother, and looking for all the world as if he, too, had lost both his contact lenses.


	6. The Sneakiness of James Rhodes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a misunderstanding involving strippers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive me if the next chapter is a little late coming - it is written but I have other deadlines! Thank you all for your beautiful comments, they make me glow with girlish joy...

Tony watched Steve work.

            He didn’t mean to, not really, but his work was boring compared to watching the movement of Steve’s muscles under his skin, the way his eyes moved across the metal of the bike as he considered the final touches.

            His big, long-fingered hands. The way his dog tags dangled down in front of him when he leant forwards. The long, wing-like sweep of his collarbone, the strong column of his throat.         

            The strength of his legs and arms, the slimness of his waist and hips.

            That ridiculous booty. Seriously, it defied all basic laws of physics. It was simultaneously so strong and solid you could crack a tooth on it, and occasionally seemed to shake like a bowl full of jelly. A mesmirising, wiggling, mental-state altering bowl full of jelly. That ass was a religious experience, and even if Tony had sworn he was going to stop obsessing over Steve – was going to stop having dreams where the guy was a sexy mermaid Tony had to save – that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the view. Right?

            He looked down at the tablet in his lap, where he had previously been trying to organise a party in his penthouse for upwards of twelve Carters and Carter-related organisms, all without Pepper’s help. She was busy, he knew, with actual important organisation-stuff, and besides, this was becoming a matter of pride. Steve had trusted him with this – it was Steve’s birthday – and he was going to prove that he was worthy.

            He was going to prove he deserved to be, if not a part of their family, then at least allowed to hang out with them.

            After all, he had a vague and abstract plan to have Steve fall hopelessly in love with him because of the flawlessness of the party. And the present. Although that one was probably going to be harder… as much as Tony adored Bruce, his one true science bro, it was kind of difficult to compete with cancer hair as a gift.

            He’d made Steve cry. Damn it, Tony wanted… well, he didn’t want to make Steve cry. He’d seen Steve cry, and it made his stomach twist painfully and his pacemaker have to overcompensate.

            He wanted to make Steve give him that warm, small smile he’d offered on Top of the Rock.

            Which meant everything had to be perfect, and it was hard to achieve perfection when Steve kept being sexy.

            It also didn’t help that it was a million degrees in the workshop, and Steve had forsaken the beloved too-tight jeans for a pair of overalls that were barely holding on where he’d tied their sleeves around his waist, and a vest that had once been white and was now smeared with grease.

            There was one stain over his pec in the shape of a handprint that Tony was absolutely not responsible for. Though judging from the way Darcy had looked pointedly between him, the pec, and the handprint, she didn’t believe that he hadn’t taken liberties with Perky.

            ‘I don’t think that fan’s really working,’ Steve said mildly, sitting back on his heels and wiping his forehead with the bottom of his vest.

            It revealed the long, curving line of his torso. He had the most perfect belly-button Tony had ever seen, and he may or may not have mewled.

            Steve blinked at him. ‘That was a weird noise, even for you. You ok?’

            His tongue was huge in his mouth? Had it always been so huge?

            ‘I think my tongue is trying to kill me,’ he explained, perfectly reasonably.

            ‘Oh.’ Steve smiled at him, all innocence and apple-pie. ‘You need a hand with that?’

            ‘BOYS,’ Darcy’s voice was a scream over the intercom system. ‘THERE IS ANOTHER STRIPPER FOR YOU AT RECEPTION.’

            Steve threw his head back and yelled, ‘for the last time, I am not a stripper!’

            ‘Good to know, Goldilocks,’ came a low, amused voice from somewhere behind Tony. ‘Though finding Tony force a stripper to fix up a vintage motorcycle wouldn’t even rank on the list of weird crap I’ve caught him doing.’      

            ‘RHODEY!’ Tony screamed, finally recognising the voice, and toppled the car seat over backwards in his enthusiasm to get to his friend. ‘YOU’RE HERE! YOU’RE… fancy. Why are you fancy?’

            The sudden, crashing relief he felt, lying on the floor and looking up at the scathing expression on Rhodey’s face, was immense. He’d _missed_ his Rhodey.

            But he was very overly fancy to be in an autoshop. He seemed to be dressed in his formal uniform, and Tony glanced back to see that Steve was standing very straight and appeared to be fighting the urge to salute.

            Rhodey helped Tony to his feet and held him at arm’s length. ‘No way, Stark, no snuggling til you take a goddamned shower. You’re filthy.’

            ‘ _But I love you_ ,’ Tony explained, fighting back by wriggling with all his might. ‘ _Let me love you!’_

            Steve coughed, pointedly, and both Tony and Rhodey paused and looked at him.

            Tony blinked. Steve was blushing, but it looked like an angry sort of blush.

            ‘Tony. Introduce me,’ he said, blue eyes flashing, and stepped close enough to put a hand on Tony’s shoulder, easily dragging him away from Rhodey’s unenthusiastic embrace.

            ‘Oh. Um. This is my Rhodey. Rhodey, this is… this is my Steve.’

            Rhodey rolled his eyes and offered his hand. ‘Ignore him. Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes.’

            The hand dropped from Tony’s shoulder and he turned to see Steve was actually, honest-to-god _saluting_.

            ‘Sir,’ Steve said crisply, ‘it’s an honor. Captain Steven Rogers-Carter, at your service.’

            ‘At ease, soldier,’ Rhodey said, and waved his hand until Steve relaxed and shook it. ‘Not a stripper, then. A marine. Though in my experience the two aren’t mutually exclusive.’

            Steve didn’t seem to know what to say to that, but when Tony tried to take another run at Rhodey, he replaced his hand on Tony’s shoulder and held him in place.

            ‘Haven’t I heard that name before, Captain? I swear it was a young Lieutenant Rogers-Carter who was behind that spectacular prisoner release a few tours back.’

            Tony looked up to see that Steve was blushing. And not even an angry blush – a happy one! Oh, hells to the no. Tony was not going to share those blushes with Rhodey, even if Rhodey was his favourite thing apart from caffeine.

            ‘It was a team effort, sir. And of course, I’ve heard of you. They say no one can fly a fighter like you, sir.’

            ‘It’s Rhodey,’ Tony sniffed. ‘Stop calling him fancy titles. He’ll start thinking he’s fancy.’

            ‘He’s a colonel, Tony. He _is_ fancy.’

            ‘What are you doing hanging round here with our resident billionaire-come-greasebaboon, Captain?’

            ‘He’s my Steve, I already told you!’ Tony said, flapping his arms to demonstrate the point.

            ‘We’re rebuilding my mom’s old bike together. Tony’s her godson,’ Steve explained. ‘I’m considering making this leave my last and retiring – it’s really nice to just hang out and work with a good friend.’

            The hand on Tony’s shoulder tightened, and Steve shifted a little closer. Tony watched Rhodey’s eyes widen and a frown crease his forehead.

            ‘He has been doing no stripping,’ Tony vowed.

            ‘Well,’ Rhodey said, and his voice sounded strange, ‘let’s not rule anything out. I mostly stopped by to say hi on my way to this military shindig – you gonna be around, the next few days?’

            ‘You should come to my birthday party at _Stark Towers_. Any friend of Tony’s, right?’ Steve offered, overly friendly.

            _How could someone be overly friendly?_ Tony wondered absently.

            ‘You’re throwing a birthday party for him, Stark? Just how close are you?’

            ‘Super close. The closest. Closer-oony.’

            Rhodey ignored him and raised an eyebrow at Steve, who said softly, ‘close.’

            ‘I’ll send you an invite. Pepper and Happy might be coming, so you’ll know people! It’ll be awesome. There’s going to be ice-cream cake.’

            To the casual observer, it would seem that Rhodey remained stoically unmoved by the offer of ice-cream cake, but Tony saw his jaw twitch and miniature ice-cream cones appear in his pupils.

            ‘What flavor?’

            Tony leant in close – or as close as he could get, with Steve’s hand still grounding him like a lead weight – and whispered the magic words to get Rhodey to show up literally anywhere. ‘ _All of the flavors._ ’

            Steve’s hand didn’t move, even when they heard Rhodey’s car start in the drive, and they stood there in silence for a long moment before Steve blurted out,

            ‘come get a burger with me.’

            Tony looked up at him and tried to process this. It was a strange thing to experience the kind of how-in-hell-does-his-mind-work sensation other people must feel whenever they spoke to him.

            ‘Huh?’

            ‘Come with me, right now, and get a burger. I’ll even buy you a malt.’

            ‘With Carol and Jess?’

            ‘No. Some place different, though not too fancy ‘cause we look like a couple of bums. Some place with you and me and food, and no brothers and no random sexy men with higher ranks than me, and no gossipy ladies who are engaged to be married pending legistlation in the state of New York.’

            ‘Not random. Rhodey.’

            ‘You’re missing the point, Tony.’

            ‘Yeah, what is the point? Because this is the angriest invitation to grab lunch I’ve ever gotten, and that’s saying something.’

            ‘I want to spend time with you, when you’re not distracted by the opportunity to weld things to other things, or when I’m having an emotional melt-down, or when my brother is showing up randomly to give me heartbreaking birthday presents. I want to know what your favorite concert was, and how you like your eggs, and what your goddamned first pet’s name was.’

            ‘Are you trying to hack into my _Neopets_ account?’

            ‘I want to know if Pepper broke your heart, and how old you were when you realised you were cleverer than everyone else, and if you could only watch one movie for the rest of your life what movie that would be. I want… I want to buy you a fucking burger.’

            ‘Ok.’

            ‘And… what?’

            ‘I said, ok. Come on, let’s grab Darcy and go.’

            In an instant, both of Steve’s hands were on Tony’s shoulders and he was looking up into a very vividly blushing face with an expression like thunder. Steve was so deep into Tony’s personal bubble that when he took one of the deep, steading breaths people tended to take around Tony, their stomachs brushed.

            ‘I do not want to bring Darcy.’

            ‘Because she wants to lick you? Really, Cap, you’d think a grown man like yourself would be able to defend himself against a tiny busty sexual deviant.’ Tony’s throat was dry, and he couldn’t stop looking at Steve’s mouth. It would probably still taste like the _Kisses_ Steve had been nomming all morning. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m in a negotiation?’

            ‘I thought you were good at negotiation.’

Steve’s voice was low, and it made something in Tony’s belly twist and pool, heating and rising up until he was certain he was matching Steve’s blush. One of the hands on his shoulders slid down his back and rested – possessively? Threateningly? – on his hip, where there was a sliver of skin shown by his too-small _Tegan and Sara_ t-shirt.

            ‘I _am_ good at negotiation,’ Tony managed, and absolutely did not squeal when he felt Steve’s thumb rub his bare skin in a slow, pensive circle. ‘Oh so very good. Excellent, in fact.’

            ‘Come and get a burger with me,’ Steve said softly, and dipped his head so that he was breathing against the column of Tony’s throat. The heat of his breath tickled Tony’s ear, and it was a good thing Steve had a death-grip on him because his legs nearly melted. ‘Just me and you, and no distractions.’

            Steve’s hand – the one on Tony’s shoulder – stroked upwards, until he could feel all of the callouses and warmth of it against his exposed chest, over the place where his heart was beating out of sync. Steve stroked, with infinite care and without flinching even a little, the scar that started at the centre of Tony’s chest.

            Tony let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding and tentatively wrapped his arms around Steve, his fingers finding the raised line of the taller man’s spine.

            ‘Ok,’ he murmured, and Steve – oh, god, Steve – pressed a quick, chaste kiss to the angry mark of the scar.

            Then dropped Tony and wandered away, calling back over his shoulder, ‘I’m just going to clean up – meet you outside in five.’

            Tony stood completely still, and then pressed a hand to the place where his heart – just checking – was, in fact, still beating. Then he glanced down at the extremely very obvious boner tenting the front of his overalls.

            _Ok_ , he thought to himself with a brain more sluggish than it had ever been during his crazy alcohol-and-drugs years, _maybe he’s not all that straight. Huh._

            Almost immediately, that thought was followed by another. _That bastard just out-negotiated me!_

            And then a third, almost enough to make his mind short-circuit. _Is this a date?_

            Why had Rhodey made Steve react like that? Whenever Steve had touched Tony before, it had been because he was having an attack, because he was falling apart and at his lowest. Tony could deal with those moments.

            This Steve… and he’d not been broken, not while he was holding Tony. He’d been strong, and Tony had felt somehow that he was fighting.

            Which was stupid. What kind of moron would fight for Tony Stark? He was damaged goods. He was too damned cowardly to even give up his hopeless crush, when he knew exactly how bad he would be for Steve. He had a natural talent for turning everything he touched to crap, for driving people away.

            He’d felt all of Steve’s intelligence, all of the impossible strength in him, turned inwards to the place where their bodies had met. He’d _felt_ something in Steve snap, had been helpless to do anything but surrender to the soldier.

            What he didn’t understand was why Rhodey had caused such a bizarre change in his friend. Maybe he should figure out a way to get Rhodey to stick around more – it would have the dual benefit of additional Rhodey time, and apparently would get him… pinned against things in a nicer, sexier way than the last time Steve had pinned him against something.

            He wandered outside, to where the sleek vintage car he used to drive himself to and from _Stark Auto_ was parked. It wasn’t worth very much – not considering the cars that lined the garage-come-workshop under _Stark Towers_ he hadn’t stepped foot into since meeting Steve – but it was unlikely to get stolen from outside the place, and Tony felt very affectionately towards it. He’d found, bought and restored it himself, the first summer he’d come back from college to find his mother passed out drunk and his father absent.

He’d grabbed Rhodey and stuffed the taller man into his towncar, had driven them to a vintage cars show upstate and had let Rhodey drive his newest purchase home while Tony himself was passed out in the backseat with the leggy Latina girl who’d persuaded him the car was an excellent buy.

            It had broken down just outside the city, the Latina had demanded money for a cab and had gone home while Tony and Rhodey sat waiting for a tow, Tony gradually sobering up.

            It was weird how that was a good memory, now, but it was. It was the night he’d realised he wouldn’t ever let Rhodey go, even though he knew he was likely to spend the rest of their lives annoying the other man and quite possibly would get him killed someday.

            It was the very first time he’d selfishly loved someone who he should’ve driven away for their own good, and… he had never regretted it.

            Now, looking at the place where Rhodey had once keyed the paintjob in a fit of angst (Tony had some vague memory about a stolen guitar pick), Tony remembered something Steve had said, that first day when they’d been yelling at each other.

            _What makes you think I could ever stop my mother from doing anything she wants to do?_

            Did he really believe that Rhodey would’ve let him drive him away? Did he think so little of the people he cared about that he believed they didn’t know what they were getting in for? That they didn’t deserve the right to chose to let him kill them, slowly and softly?

            Everything kills you, after all. Eating and drinking, breathing and ageing. Maybe he should start letting people decide if they wanted to let him hurt them. From what he’d seen of the Carter family, love didn’t seem like the worst way to die.

            At the coffee shop the day before he’d seen that intimate moment between Bruce and Steve. Bruce had been so sick, and if Steve had never accepted him as a brother, he wouldn’t have suffered when Bruce got ill. He wouldn’t have had to deal with the worry, the guilt, the fear of losing him.

            But that wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it, because he got to have Bruce – gentle, serene and sharp – loving him, and missing him, and being afraid for him when he was away fighting.

            It hurt. It was going to hurt – there was no way out of that. But it might just be worth it. Nothing worth having ever came easy.

            Courage flooded the chambers of his bruised, battered heart, and he gasped, the fear and bliss of it nearly overwhelming.

            ‘Are you ready to go?’ Steve’s hand found his waist again, easy and possessive, and when Tony didn’t react he took it back and Tony was cold. ‘Are you alright?’

            ‘I’m fine.’

            It was a ridiculous lie, but Tony wasn’t quite ready yet to share the truth. _No, I’m not fine. I’m in love with you, and I haven’t even known you for a month, and we’re both broken as hell. I’m in love with you, and it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt, and it’s so warm I feel like I’m burning._

            ‘Get in the car, Tony,’ Steve’s tone was amused, affectionate, and with an easy gesture he grabbed the keys from Tony’s hand and slid into the driver’s seat.

            ‘Easy there, soldier. You ever driven stick?’

            Steve gave him a strange look, and then grinned. ‘I can handle myself. Do you have any allergies?’

            Tony blinked at him, opened his mouth and shut it again as Steve slid the car into reverse, swung the steeringwheel into a full lock and then immediately back again, slamming the car backwards into the street like a lunatic.

            They took off, and Tony slowly, with shaking hands, reached for the seatbelt and slid it into place. Never again. Never again would he mock Pepper for braking against the passenger seat floor.

            ‘Good idea,’ Steve said earnestly, ‘there are some crazy drivers on these roads. So. Allergies?’

            ‘Um. No? Wait. I think I had a bad reaction to penicillin one time.’

            ‘You don’t know?’

            ‘I kind of use Pepper or the Internet. I google myself if I’m not sure.’

            Steve smiled at him and shifted into fifth gear as if the gearbox had personally done something to offend him.

            ‘I’m not allergic to anything, anymore, but I was intollerant to pretty much anything when I was a kid. I grew out of it, thank god. I was the scrawniest, most pathetic little thing.’

            ‘Aw, come on. You must’ve been adorable. Does Peggy have photos?’

            Steve blushed a little, and Tony’s stomach squirmed. It was pathetic. Tony wanted to lick his neck.

            ‘Truck loads, if you really want to embarrass me. And I was just… little. I was so angry, though. I got beat up literally all the time, standing up to bullies. Bucky had to save my ass more often than not.’

            Tony tensed, then realised that there wasn’t any hesitation before saying that name. There was no anger, no sadness, just a good memory and a name that had been said with love a thousand times before, and would be said a thousand more.

            God, he was turning into a goddamned poet. It was the least gangster thing, like, ever.

            ‘I would’ve had your back. And skinny or not, you would’ve still had that face.’

            ‘What do you mean?’

            ‘You might’ve been little, but you must’ve always been this handsome. Your growth spurt didn’t change your eyes, so you can quit it with the false modesty.’

            Steve missed a gear change and the engine screeched in a key very similar to the scream Tony let out.

            ‘Sorry! Sorry,’ Steve yelled out the window. He drove for a second in silence, and then burst out with, ‘I like your beard.’

            Tony gaped at him and tightened his grip on the bottom of the seat. ‘You’re a crazy person. I’m being driven to a diner by a crazy person who is quoting _Ke$ha_ at me.’

            ‘Who?’

            ‘Focus on the road! Oh, my god, you drive like a senile old man. And how in hell is it that you’ve managed to avoid literally all pop culture since Kurt Cobain died? And,’ he snapped, ‘I swear to all that is holy if you utter the words _who’s Kurt Cobain_ in my presence you can just drop me off here and I’ll walk back. You can keep the damned car, you’ve already destroyed the clutch.’

            ‘”Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are”,’ Steve said quietly, and smiled at Tony.

            ‘Eyes on the road! Eyes on the mother hubbard road, Rogers! You know what? Let’s go there. That diner, right there. No further driving required!’

            Obidiently, Steve pulled over in a spot in front of a relatively clean-looking breakfast place, and Tony heroically fought the urge to kiss the earth when he fell out of the passenger side door.

            Steve watched him re-acquaint himself with solid earth and had the good grace to look apologetic.

            ‘Sorry. The last thing I drove was kind of… armored.’

            ‘It’s fine. Just… give me a second.’

            He took deep, cleansing breaths, and then held his hand out. Steve dropped the keys into it.

            ‘Do you like old movies?’ he asked. Tony looked up at him and wondered if he’d finally met his randomness nemesis.

            ‘Like… before _Star Wars_ old?’

            ‘I have all the Doris Day movies,’ Steve said cheerfully.

            ‘How do you say that with literally no shame?’

            Steve shrugged and held the door of the diner open for Tony, then escorted him to a booth near the back.

            ‘I like Rock Hudson,’ he explained. Then, to the waitress, ‘two cheeseburgers with fries, one vanilla milkshake and one chocolate, and two slices of whatever pie is good today.’

            Tony glared at her, mostly because Steve had smiled at her, and she scuttled away.

‘Was that really necessary, Tony?’

‘She was being unsubtle,’ he sniffed, and ignored Steve’s bark of laughter. ‘Shut up, I can be subtle when I need to be. So, Cap, what’s this sudden interest in all the uninteresting little details of my life?’

Steve shredded a napkin and avoided Tony’s gaze. ‘It occurred to me that Rhodey knows you better than me, that he knows all of these little things about you just ‘cause he’s known you longer, and it kind of… irritated me. I want to know all those things.’

‘Why?’

Steve finally looked up, and Tony found himself being swallowed whole by eyes the colour of summer sky and Maria Stark’s sapphires, locked away in the vault since her death.

‘Because I’m planning on keeping you, Tony. I’ve lived through too much and lost too much not to know something worth holding on to when I find it.’

Tony squeezed his eyes shut and fisted his palms, mostly to fight the overwhelming urge to throw himself across the diner table and crawl into Steve’s lap.

That was always Tony’s problem: he held on too hard, and no one was ever willing to hold on to him. The idea that Steve might – even if they’d just be friends – opened up a scar Tony hadn’t even been aware was aching.

‘Does it work both ways? Because I’m fascinated to know how you met Peggy. Where’s your birth family?’

Steve regarded him steadily, then scooted around the booth so that they were sitting side by side. He yawned, stretched and put his arms along the backrest.

‘They’re all dead, God rest them,’ he said peacefully. ‘My dad died in service before I was born – friendly fire, can you believe that? – and my _matka_ passed away when I was four. I remember her, a little. My dad didn’t have any family to speak of and my _matka_ was a Polish immigrant, so when she died, there wasn’t anyone to take me in. I wound up in a foster home.’

‘Was it alright? I mean, you hear stories, but…’

Steve accepted the vanilla milkshake from the waitress and nudged the chocolate towards Tony, who realised belatedly that Steve had ordered for him and now had his arm around his shoulders.

That sneaky bastard. Tony tried not to show how ridiculously pleased the realisation made him – he was _not_ a teenage girl with travelling pants and sweet valleys.

‘It was rough. There are good homes, run by good people, but this one was under-funded and the people who worked there didn’t care. The kids were really damaged. They were like me – kids who couldn’t get fostered, for one reason or another. I had allergies and asthma, and Bucky… Bucky was just trouble.’

‘So how’d you wind up with Peg?’

‘Bucky got fostered out, and without him, I went a little… feral. I got in serious trouble; the people who ran the home didn’t want me there anymore. They said I was a bad influence on the other kids, but really, they were just sick of me. It was the only home I’d ever known, and they didn’t want me. When my social worker dropped me at this big, beautiful brownstone with Mozart filtering out of the windows, I thought there was some mistake. I thought she’d dropped off the wrong kid.

‘For weeks, I was well-behaved, always trying to do more than my share of chores, actually going to school instead of playing hooky. I was terrified Peggy would realise I wasn’t the kid she wanted and would send me away – I loved her so much, so quickly. She bought me art supplies and fed me whenever I was hungry, and she let me cook using her stove like a grown up, and I had my own room with sheets I picked out myself.’

Tony grinned at the image of kid Stevie, so excited and so scared. He could understand why Peggy had fallen in love with him, and it broke his heart to know that she’d been the first person since Bucky to do it.

‘When did you realise she wanted you?’ he asked.

Steve smiled, the action of it making his face crease into easy, deep lines. Tony’s stomach tightened – he wanted to memorise and map that face like it was a new engine design. He could never imagine getting bored of watching Steve.

‘After two months, she sat me down and I thought she was going to send me away, and I started crying, saying how much I loved her and how I’d be good, I’d do all the work, I’d get a job and earn my keep, if she’d just let me stay.’

Tony frowned. ‘What kind of place was that foster home, to make a kid think that way?’

Steve gave him a fond look and murmured, ‘she gave me a massive hug and left a lipstick mark on my forehead, told me that she’d wanted to talk to me about adoption. She told me that she loved me, that I was clever and brave and that she knew she could never take the place of my birth family, but that she hoped we could have a new sort of family.’

Tony sighed and licked the side of his straw, not noticing Steve follow the gesture and swallow, hard, a flush rising up his neck. ‘I freaking love your mom, Steve.’

‘So do I. She taught me how to be the person I am today. I owe her everything – she gave me a chance when no one else would. She gave me my family.’

Tony thought about it, then as their food was placed in front of them, said, ‘I don’t like eggs, but I like omlettes with ketchup sometimes. No tomatoes, ever. I never had a first pet – I built a robot. His name’s DUM-E; I’ll introduce you to him sometime, he’s still functional, though he’s pretty useless at making smoothies. I can’t remember when I realised I’m smarter than everyone – I just always knew, and I could never understand why my father wasn’t impressed by it. Pepper broke me, but she didn’t break my heart. I never loved her the way she deserved; I don’t think I was ever in love with her.’

He took a massive bite of burger and chewed, slowly. Beside him, Steve was barely breathing; he wondered if his outbursts of honesty really were of so much value that Steve was afraid if he breathed they’d end.

‘The best concert I’ve ever seen was the _Red Hot Chilli Peppers_ \- I autographed Flea’s stomach – and if I could watch just one movie forever, it would be _The Fifth Element_. Was that everything?’

Steve smiled at him, then reached up, and with his thumb brushed the side of Tony’s mouth. ‘You have special sauce in your beard,’ he said, and absent-mindedly sucked it off of his thumb.

Tony squeaked, ‘you need any more info, pumpkin?’

‘Always, sweetheart,’ Steve murmured, and started tucking into his burger like a starving man.

‘Is there anything you really want at the party? Because at the moment, the list Peter gave me consists of fireworks, ice-cream cake, a waterslide and dry ice.’

Mouth full of burger, Steve mumbled, ‘waterslide? I thought it was inside?’

‘You’ve not had the pleasure of visiting my apartment. There is room for a whole waterpark up there. So, there’s nothing you want?’

Steve swallowed an improbably large mouthful of bread. ‘You’ll be there? And my family, and Erskine and Coulson?’

‘Yeah, that’s the plan.’

Steve shrugged. ‘Then I don’t need anything else.’

Tony was really starting to get sick of constantly feeling as if Steve was pulling the rug from beneath his feet. He stared helplessly at him for a second, til Steve looked up and smiled around a mouthful of French fries.

It really had been a lot simpler when Steve had been yelling at him. It had put less strain on his pacemaker.

Words bubbled up onto his tongue, and he forced them back down. It wasn’t time. It might never be time to say what he was thinking, because he was beginning to realise that losing Steve as a friend wasn’t an option. He couldn’t afford to lose this warmth, lose the way that he seemed able to touch a part of Steve that had been damaged in the desert, give him something no one else could.

But the words wouldn’t go away, even if they went unsaid.

The lines of a WH Auden poem he’d read in college crept into his brain, unasked for and unwanted, and he shivered although it was not cold.

_How should we like it were stars to burn_

_With a passion for us we could not return?_

_If equal affection cannot be,_

_Let the more loving one be me._

They ate, and talked, and Tony knew that whatever happened, he couldn’t regret this insane, unlikely love living in his ribs.

He ducked his head and ate his food, and felt it like a flame whenever Steve smiled.

And was completely unaware of the equal affection burning in his friend’s heart.


	7. Happy Birthday, Captain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone does many 'Big Emotional Birthday Moment' shots, Dr Erskine wins hide-and-seek and everything else is a little blurry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much fluff, you guys. Thank you all for your beautiful comments - this is the last chapter before we get to the good stuff, I swear ;)

The party was due to start in half an hour, and Steve somehow was standing in the middle of Peggy’s living room wearing nothing but a towel and feeling faint.

            He’d panicked, waking up at six in the morning, because he’d realised that he had nothing to wear. It was going to be fancy – he was going to tell Tony the truth, was going to put everything on the line – and he had to look good. He had to be dressed in something other than filthy jeans and a wifebeater.

            He’d shoved literally everything he owned into the washing machine and had gone for a run to clear his head. He’d gotten distracted, halfway around his route, by the idea of Tony on a waterslide, and had smacked into a tree.

            Now he had a bruise on his shoulder and had gotten back to find that a single one of Peter’s collection of red t-shirts had made its way into his laundry, and he had literally nothing that wasn’t stained pink.

            Steve had put the majority of it into a stain remover immediately, but now it wasn’t dry, and even then, none of it was really good enough to wear to Tony’s. Why hadn’t he gone shopping? Apart from the fact that if it wasn’t for art supplies, Steve really hated shopping. And the fact that in the week or so since Bruce and Peter had managed to persuade Tony to throw the party, Steve had spent almost every spare minute of his time busily distracting the mechanic.

            He couldn’t help it. He was addicted, and it was getting stupid the way that he started to get melancholy and strange if he went too long without talking to Tony. He’d tried texting, but it wasn’t the same – he wanted to hear Tony’s voice, to see his face as he reacted to all of the thoughts Steve had built up in years and years of dishonesty and silence.

            Tony _listened_ , in a way no one ever did. He wasn’t always present – his mind moved too fast to be kept in one place very long – but when he was, he was completely present. Steve was in love with the sensation of his skin prickling when he realised he was the focus of all of that extraordinary intelligence.

            He’d persuaded himself that he wasn’t good enough for Tony, but when Rhodey had visited the workshop, the hot rush of jealousy had been overwhelming, and before he’d realised what he was doing he was touching Tony, holding him back, and explaining to the other soldier with unspoken words that Tony was _his_.

            He wasn’t good for Tony, but he also wasn’t good at losing, and he’d be damned if he’d lose him.

            And besides, when he was talking to Bucky – something he did often, lying in bed and unable to get to sleep because of re-living every moment of the desert or of the autoshop – he’d suddenly realised exactly what his friend would think of Steve’s belief he wasn’t good enough.

            _Don’t be an idiot, Rogers. You deserve all the fucking best outta life. You’re the best guy I know – he’d be lucky to have you._

            He made Steve happy. Even if he turned him down – and he might, Steve knew better than anyone that Tony was touchy-feely, that it didn’t mean anything – then it would break Steve’s heart, but at least he would’ve been honest. Telling someone you were so in love that it felt like flu could never be a bad thing to hear.

            Well, maybe if he phrased it like that. Poetry was really, very not his thing. But who wouldn’t want to hear that someone thought they were amazing and wanted them? It would be good. It would be terrifying, but Steve was anything but a coward.

            Loving Tony – helplessly, against all reason – made Steve better. Stronger, happier, braver. That wouldn’t go away if Tony didn’t love him back.

            But none of this grand emotional reasoning and epiphany-having would do him jack shit of good if he couldn’t find something to wear.

            ‘Pegggyyyyy,’ Steve keened, grabbing his towel to stop it sliding too low on his hips, ‘Mom, help!’

            ‘She’s getting ready,’ Tasha’s familiar voice came from behind him, and he only jumped a little. Because he was a fullgrown man – a soldier – and he was _not_ still scared of his little sister. ‘What’s up, Stevie? Where are your pants? Did Tony tell you this was a no-pants party, because I had to explain to Thor in his first year of college that isn’t a thing. Kudos to Jane for thinking of it, though, that lady’s crazy smart.’

            ‘I don’t have anything to wear, Tash,’ he said, miserable, and dropped onto the sofa, his head in his hands. ‘This is going to be a disaster.’

            ‘Yes, probably. But almost certainly not for the reasons you’re thinking. I’m a little concerned about how breakable this place is going to be.’

            Steve looked up and found that Tasha was wearing her equivalent of a party dress – a slightly shorter, slightly tighter black dress than usual, with a pattern of lace skulls around the hem and un-torn fishnets in her nicest Docs.

            It would be so easy if he were a girl. He’d just put on something pretty, and show a little skin, and then marry Tony and have lots of sex and babies.

            Except then it wouldn’t be guy sex, which would suck. Steve was very much looking forward to the guy sex.

            Tasha disappeared somewhere around the point of Steve’s thought process where his towel started to tent a little around the crotch, and re-appeared suddenly with a familiar suit-bag.

            ‘You want me to wear my dress uniform?’ Steve asked, subtly moving a couch cushion onto his lap.

            Judging by the slight quirk of Tasha’s mouth – equivalent to a grin on anyone else – she noticed, and knew exactly why one of Hawk’s earlier attempts at cross-stitch was suddenly so interesting.

            ‘Trust me, Steve. I take it this is an important night, Tony-wise?’

            Steve eyed her suspiciously. ‘I plead the fifth.’

            She settled next to him on the sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table – something that Peggy would clip her round the ear for if she came in and spotted it. He caught a waft of her perfume – a lighter version of the one Peggy wore – and felt his blood surge with affection for her.

            Of all his siblings, he was perhaps proudest of Tasha. Proud of her for all of the things that came naturally to her – her impossible drive to succeed, her strength and grace and the beauty that radiated from her – but more for the things that didn’t. He was proud of her whenever she tollerated the idiocy of strangers, or of family. Proud of her when she voluntarily touched someone – prouder when she let them touch her and didn’t flinch.

            She’d told him once what had happened to her as a child, and he didn’t know if she’d ever told anyone else. Maybe Clint – maybe not. If she had, Steve knew Clint would’ve gone out and sought some sort of justice for it.

            It was not his story to share, and he’d kept her confidence. But it added something to the way he looked at her – to his love for her, and the way he always seemed to find himself crying when he watched her dance.

            ‘I figured it out as soon as the poor idiot laid eyes on you,’ she said simply. ‘And you’ve been like a lovesick little girl for weeks.’

            He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. ‘I didn’t… I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this. He just fits. So many coincidences and terrible things brought us to this place, and I can’t stop thinking that even if there were a thousand other universes, we would find a way to each other in every single one of them. It’s like when I realised you were my sister, Tasha. It was so simple – it just slotted into place.’

            She stared at him. ‘You’re in love with him. Damn it, Steve, can’t you ever do anything the easy way?’

            He laughed, an edge of hysteria to it. ‘Apparently not. I’m panicking because… because I want to tell him, and I thought it would be easier if I looked nice.’

            ‘Well, that’s stupid. You always look nice. Tonight you need to look sexy, and believe me when I say that the best and only way for Captain Steve Rogers-Carter to start an epidemic of panty-dropping is by showing up anywhere in that uniform.’

            ‘Really?’

            ‘Yes. Trust me on this one.’ She petted the top of his head awkwardly. ‘You know if he hurts you I’ll kill him slowly, yeah?’

            ‘Please don’t?’

            ‘Non-negotiable. No one makes my big brother cry. What would you do if someone broke my heart?’

            The sudden flicker of anger at the suggestion made him grin. ‘I’d break the rules of the Geneva Convention.’

            ‘Good to know, Stevie.’

            Tasha stood and made to go into Peggy’s room – probably to help with her hair, which since the arthritis was a pain in the neck – and Steve called out after her, ‘you look really pretty, Black Widow.’

            She turned and gave him an honest-to-God smile at the reminder of the nickname Steve and Clint had given her, during the height of her punk-rocker phase. They’d thought it sounded like a cool rock-star name, and Tasha did have a history of being unreasonably flexible and hiding in nooks and crannies.

            ‘Thanks, Captain America. Right back atcha.’

            Steve got up – almost losing his towel to the forces of gravity – and shuffled back to his room, to change into his uniform.

            It was clean, thanks to Peggy’s obsession with the old hippy guy who ran the dry-cleaners down the road and said she had _beautiful energy_ – Steve was considering punching that guy – and it did make him feel stronger when he fastened the last button. It was like armour.

            He was wearing his nicest boxers. Just in case of… dropping of panties.

            There was a knock at his door just as he was combing his hair for the tenth time, and he yelled, ‘come in!’

            It swung open to reveal Loki, dressed in dark green and black with his long black hair curling behind his ears to show off strange horn-like ear-cuffs.

            ‘Do you think anyone at this party is going to understand whatever ironic reference you’re channelling here, Loki?’ Steve said, gesturing to the ear-things.

            Loki shrugged, as if he could care less, and purred, ‘well, seeing as it’s going to be all _your_ friends, I doubt it. But they’re new, and it’s a party, so everyone can go to hell.’

            ‘That’s going to be on your tombstone, isn’t it?’ Steve said, smiling.

            Loki chuckled and settled on Steve’s bed, watched him dab _Old Spice_ onto his pulse points.

            ‘You’re such an old man,’ he said, not unfriendly. ‘How goes the seduction of your future husband and father to my army of nieces and nephews?’

            Steve shot him a look. ‘No armies. I can only imagine the chaos if you got hold of an army. Do you remember that fit you had when you thought only Thor was going to get adopted, not you?’

            Loki sniffed and rolled his eyes. ‘Please. I was a child.’

            ‘You were fourteen, and you were enough of a moron to genuinely think a) that Peggy didn’t adore you and b) that she would just adopt one of a pair of brothers.’

            ‘Well. Thor has a… broader appeal. I apologised for the whole… trying to kill you all thing.’

            ‘To say we’re all relieved you grew out of the homocidal tendencies is a massive understatement,’ Steve said affectionately. ‘What do you want?’

            ‘To give you your birthday present, brother-mine. Or shall I just go somewhere I’m appreciated?’

            Steve grinned and flopped next to Loki on the bed, grabbed the tall, lean man and ruffled his hair until he mewled like a disgruntled kitten.

            ‘Steeeeeeve,’ he moaned, and Steve dropped him long enough to grab the long rectangular parcel Loki had deposited on the bedside table.

            The wrapping paper was covered in happy-looking horses. Steve never had understood Loki’s love of horses – it was just another of the many things that he and the rest of his family just accepted as a quirk of their brother’s.

            ‘There’s a card,’ Loki said, with just enough energy to it that it would’ve been akin to a girlish squeal in anyone else.

            Steve opened the envelope to find a card with a picture of a famous Internet cat on the front looking miserable. A caption said, ‘ _Everything sucks_.’ He opened it, and inside was a massive quantity of silver glitter that made Steve sigh with the weariness of a man whose dress uniform had just been spangled. The caption on the inside said, ‘ _except you, sometimes. Happy Birthday!’_ Then, in Loki’s spiky cursive, _Sorry for being such a dick most of the time. I missed you. L._

Steve grabbed Loki in a bone-crushing hug and ignored his brother’s flailing arms until the dark-haired man relaxed into the embrace.

            His voice was muffled against Steve’s lapel. ‘I like Tony. He’s smart. But if he’s mean to you, I’ll burn everything he loves to ash and cinders.’

            ‘I love you too, buddy.’

            He kind of hoped that Tony had someone who cared enough about him to threaten Steve with bodily harm. It was, weirdly, a lovely feeling.

            ‘Open the damned present and stop touching me,’ Loki muttered.

            He did, and found an unlabelled bottle of strange gold-yellow liquid. He looked at Loki, raising an eyebrow in question.

            ‘You’re almost as much a heavy-weight as Thor, so I tracked down this booze from the village he and I were born in, back in Norway. It’s literally the strongest thing you’re ever going to drink, and it tastes like a cola-icecream float. I thought you should get a buzz on… it’s your first birthday back with us for years, after all.’

            Steve resisted the urge to cuddle Loki again, mostly because he knew how desperately uncomfortable it made him. ‘Thanks – that’s so cool!’

            ‘Yeah. Don’t give any to Thor – I’m going to make him do a keg stand.’

            ‘There’s going to be kegs?’ Steve asked, a little horrified.

            ‘I should hope so – Tony better not pretend he didn’t see my Tweets on the subject. I need them, for science. By the way, my band’s going to be there, and photos of them playing an exclusive party at Tony Stark’s house have already been taken and will be leaked at midnight.’

            ‘How does that work?’

            ‘Photoshop and hired actors in place of guests, mostly. It’s really going to put _Lady Sif and the Warriors Three_ on the map, Stevie. This time next year, we’ll be having your birthday part in _my_ penthouse suite.’

            Steve sighed and couldn’t resist a smile. He liked Sif and the rest of the band – they played really pretty Scandanavian indie rock he knew without being told would annoy Tony no end. But Sif added a little sparkle to whatever party she deigned to grace, so it would be fun.

            Peter suddenly barrelled into the room, having obviously been dressed in his fanciest red shirt by Peggy. ‘Steve! There’s a limo, Steve! There’s a guy in it who says he’s supposed to fill it with Carters and he says he’s called Hoppy but I told him that’s not a real name and I’m not meant to talk to strangers.’

            ‘His name’s Happy, Pete.’

            Loki sniffed. ‘That is better how, exactly?’

            Steve grabbed one brother in each hand – Loki grabbed the mystery bottle of probably illegal Norweigan liquor – and physically put them outside the apartment, before returning inside and doing the same three minutes later with Clint, Bruce, his mother and Dr Erskine. Thor and Jane were meeting them there, and Coulson and Tasha gave him matching looks of disdain when he tried to grab them and instead made their own way down to the street, muttering to each other in a frankly alarming manner.

            Finally, certain his entire family was stuffed into the sleek black limousine that was causing the neighbors to point and stare, Steve ducked into the car and was met by a cork smacking him in the side of the head.

            ‘Oh, great job, Clint,’ Natasha said as Steve was sat down and fussed over by their mother. ‘”Happy birthday, Steve, here: have a champagne cork to the brain.’

            ‘Sorry, Steve,’ Clint said, handing him a crystal flute of _Dom_. ‘What shall we drink to?’

            Very solemnly, accepting a glass of champagne, Coulson suggested, ‘to Steve’s impending invitation to the pants party?’

            Peggy’s shocked gasp of, _‘Phillip!_ ’ was drowned out by everyone else – including Peter and Dr Erskine – yelling, ‘ _To the pants party!_ ’

            By the time the limo drew up outside _Stark Towers_ and all of them piled into the elevator, Tasha was wearing one of Loki’s ear-horns, Peter had ruined his best shirt, Clint had a new hickey, Coulson had a smug expression and Erskine was already tipsy enough that he was giggling helplessly into Peggy’s scarf. Which was, incidentally, still attached to Peggy.

            Bruce looked as if he was developing a migrane and Loki had part of his hair braided. One of Steve’s medals – he couldn’t even remember what that one was for, but it was a seriously unattractive color – was pinned to Peggy’s skirt, and Steve himself had mixed some of his birthday liquor with the champagne and was feeling pleasantly serene about the whole fucked-up lot of them.

            They were seriously late, and when they burst into Tony’s apartment – dispersing immediately to do God-knows-what – the few guests who were already there stared at them.

            Steve recognised Rhodey and Pepper, who were standing in the corner. He also recognised Jane, who was looking lovely in high-waisted trousers and an oversized man’s shirt, her short hair fluffy around her head and seeming impossibly small where she was perched on her boyfriend’s lap.

            Thor, on whose lap she was seated, was beaming like a crazy person and was already singing a song about a brave warrior and his true love.

            The stylish woman singing along with him was Sif, the lead singer of Loki’s band.

            There was a rush of people greeting him, clapping him on the back and wishing him happy birthday – Pepper smiled at him, and he realised just how lovely she was as she pressed a plate of icecream cake into his hands. Rhodey looked a little sick, and explained in a friendly manner that he’d already eaten twice his body weight and was considering throwing up on Tony’s rubber plant.

            ‘I got something for you,’ Pepper said pleasantly, sipping her orange juice. She handed him a black ringbinder with the words _Tony Stark_ on the front.

            ‘What’s this?’

            ‘More or less? An owner’s manual. You probably won’t need it, from what he’s told me, but it might be handy to have his social security and medical records somewhere on hand. His birth certificate and divorce papers are in there, too.’

            Steve stared at her, horrified, and she suddenly burst out laughing. Rhodey shoved her gently, smiling. ‘Come on, Pep, don’t torture the kid. He’s alright.’

            Steve tried and failed not to blush at that particular complement coming from _the_ James Rhodes.

            ‘Sorry. Sorry! But bless, your face. You’re cute as a button, I can see why he’s smitten. Tony has never been married – he’s free and single as a bird. And as of his last blood-test a month ago, officially clean of any nasty billionaire bugs.’

            Steve swallowed his tongue and started to choke – Rhodey smacked him on the back with a certain amount of enthusiasm as Pepper smirked at him.

            ‘You’re evil, Potts-Hogan,’ Rhodey said affectionately. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to be somebody’s mother.’

            ‘Poor little fucker,’ Pepper agreed, serenely rubbing her nearly-flat belly.

            The room exploded into sound and Steve fought the impulse to hit the ground, realising belatedly that the noise was Sif’s band members finding and abusing Tony’s sound system.

            ‘Hurt him and we’ll gut you, alright, Stevie?’ Rhodey said, and petted his head.

            ‘Everyone is conspiring,’ Steve muttered, and they both smiled, happy he was following the plot. ‘What if I just want to… I don’t know. Take him for a burger, see what happens?’

            ‘You’ve already done that,’ Pepper said, ‘and I have tea with Peggy every second Sunday. I know all about you, Steve, and I know that you’ve got it bad. Anyway – you should have fun, enjoy your party. If you want Tony, he’s on the balcony fighting with the fireworks.’

            The panic Steve felt obviously must’ve shown on his face, because Rhodey snorted a mouthful of beer out his nose. ‘I think he’s going to be fine, Pep. That is the correct response to hearing that Tony’s got his hands on explosives.’

            Steve never made it to the balcony. Peggy insisted he open his presents, with everyone – except Pepper and Tony, who were apparently on Peter-watching duty – drinking every time they incorrectly guessed the contents of the parcel.

            Tony was standing at the back of the crowd, looking unsure of himself, until Loki physically picked him up and deposited him next to Dr Erskine on the sofa. Erskine had apparently started on the schnapps around midday and affectionately propped his head on Tony’s shoulder to watch the proceedings.

            Much as he loved his family, Steve really wanted to just go and crawl onto Tony’s lap, smooth away the frown between his eyebrows and inhale the faint scent of gunpowder. Tony was wearing a navy-blue suit with the jacket discarded, the sleeves rolled up almost all the way to the waistcoat arms and a smear of something black and unidentified on his neck.

            He caught Steve staring almost immediately and raised his crystal tumbler of artisan apple juice in acknowledgement, a tiny smile ghosting the corners of his lips.

            Steve couldn’t help it – he grinned at him and gave a small mock salute, and felt satisfaction curl low and warm in his belly when Tony flushed scarlet.

            Score one for Natasha’s uniform idea.

            Peter wrapped both arms around one of Steve’s legs and watched him open his present – a fully working old-fashioned musicbox Peter had assembled with Erskine’s help inside a matchbox. When Steve turned the little handle, it played _Scarborough Fair_ – the song Peggy always sang in the shower.

            From Tasha, there were tickets for the two of them to go see the exhibition he’d been eyeing up at _MoMA_. From Clint, a care package of all the DVDs and good music he’d apparently missed during his tours of duty – from Phil, a beautiful display of carefully framed WWII-era baseball cards.

            Thor – and Jane, who had probably been in charge of the decision – had somehow managed to find a signed copy of his favorite poetry anthology by e.e cummings. Loki poured Steve another drink to demonstrate that his present had already been given, and everyone was force-fed more ice cream cake. He was already quite tipsy by the time that Thor suggested A ROUSING GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK, and when they finally found Dr Erskine asleep in a closet, the elderly man handed Steve a half-drunk bottle of schnapps by way of a birthday present and Happy was summoned to take him home.

            This time, when they sat down to open more presents, Tony somehow wound up next to him on the sofa, the weight of Steve’s body making the smaller man slide helplessly into his side. Face burning from the alcohol, Steve absently rubbed his cheek against the top of Tony’s head and accepted a neatly wrapped parcel from Peggy.

            ‘I don’t want to upset you,’ she said softly, nervously, and everyone fell silent.

            They were all so scared of breaking him, he knew, though apart from Tony and Peggy none of them had seen it happen. None of them would, either. He would be strong for them. Whatever Peggy had given him, she’d meant with love. She’d meant it well.

            ‘It took me a very long time to find these,’ she added. ‘I thought… I thought it was appropriate. For this birthday. You’re starting anew, Steven. You’ve done it before, but this time, it might be the last. You can be a civilian. You can have a life of your own. No more struggling – you need only fight for the things you chose, not because you have no other choice.’

            Beside him, Tony was warm and solid, breathing softly. Steve handed him the small box and, blaming it on the liquor, wrapped an arm around Tony’s waist and pressed his nose into the place where Tony’s shoulder met his neck.

            ‘Open it for me?’

            Tony – thank God for Tony’s acceptance, for his easy understanding of the complexities of Steve’s broken mind – tore the wrapping paper like a small child ripping off a bandaid, opened the box and tipped the contents into his hand.

            ‘ _Lance Corporal Joseph Rogers, 1 st Batallion 2nd Marines. Catholic_,’ he read.

            Steve looked up at Peggy, whose eyes were swimming with tears, one hand in front of her mouth to stop a sob. Her nails were painted pale green; a mother’s day present from Tasha, Steve knew.

            ‘You found my father’s dogtags. How?’

            ‘Your mother left them to you in her will. She was in debt when she died, and the city claimed everything – these were kept in storage for you, but when you kept being moved from home to home as a child, they were forgotten. She meant for you to have them, Stevie – she never forgot you, she tried to make sure you had what was yours.’

            In a heartbeat, the world still spinning a little, he was on his knees in front of Peggy, taking both her hands in his and smoothing a tear away from her cheek.

            ‘Hey. Hey, look at me.’ She swallowed, and met his gaze, and his heart clenched. ‘This is an amazing thing you’ve done for me, but you know that I don’t feel I’m missing anything. You are my mother. In every way that counts, you are my mother, and you’ve given me everything. I started my new life the day you took me in, Peggy. If my birth parents could, they would thank you. You raised me when they couldn’t.’

            Peggy made a weird sort of hiccuping noise and threw both her arms around his neck. The tension broken, Steve heard Clint say, ‘right, let’s put Petey to bed in one of those spare bedrooms and everyone’s got to do a _big emotional birthday moment_ shot.’

            ‘It’s his first birthday back from active duty. That’s… literally every moment,’ Tony’s voice filtered in.

            ‘Exactly. Come on, Stark, let’s get you high on sugar and E-numbers. I brought you _Twizzlers_ and _Swedish Fish_ – I want to see how red your tongue can get.’

            Steve pulled back from Peggy and awkwardly tried to pat away her tears without ruining her carefully applied makeup.

            Suddenly, Tony dropped down beside them both, and his arms were around Steve’s neck.

            Steve felt a new weight against his chest, and looked down to see Joseph Rogers’ old grey gunmetal dogtags dangling there. He looked up, and Tony was still avoiding looking at Steve’s face, staring at the place where the dogtags punctuated Steve’s dress uniform, his arms forgotten around Steve’s neck.

            Slowly, unwilling to spook Tony or lose his closeness – forgetting he was still sitting at his mother’s feet – Steve lifted his own hands to his neck and undid the clasps of his own tags. The ones he hadn’t removed since he’d received his commission, which were a constant presence over his heart, a reminder of who he was and what he stood for.

            Mind still a little alcohol-blurred, he fastened them around Tony’s neck. They fell right over the place where his scar had to be at its biggest, and Tony’s eyes snapped to meet Steve’s, surprised and with a question so bright there it hurt to look at.

            Steve managed to smile, though his brain felt slow and too peaceful to make his muscles work. One of his hands found the curve of Tony’s jaw, and he pressed a kiss that was mostly sigh to the older man’s forehead.

            ‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ he caught himself saying, low and honest, to the warmth of Tony’s skin. ‘But you’re here. Thank god you’re here.’

            Tony shivered, and Steve’s reverie was broken by a sudden, supersonic wail from Peggy.

            ‘Mom? You ok?’ Clint was behind her when Steve looked up, his hands dropping from Tony as he realised his mother was crying.

            ‘I-I’m just s-so happy,’ she managed, and burst into a fresh peal of hiccuping tears, this time into Hawk’s best royal purple t-shirt. He petted her awkwardly and rolled his eyes at Steve.

            ‘Come on, Ma, let’s put you in one of Tony’s spare bedrooms so you don’t have to see the debauchery Stark and I have planned for later tonight.’

            Peggy was shepherded away, and Steve was grabbed by Tasha to get involved with _Twister_. From across the room, he caught Tony’s gaze, and saw that he had his hand fisted around the dogtags.

            Something in Steve heated and bloomed at the idea that Tony was wearing _his_ tags. Then he turned back to the game and that was more or less all he would be able to remember of that birthday.


	8. Rewards and Patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which something sorely missed is, finally, found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a little warning: this is where it earns the M rating. This is the smuttiest, most feel-filled chapter ever; a reward for all of you being so lovely with your comments! Xx

At half past 2 in the afternoon, the day after the party that had resulted in Tony waking up dressed in a cardboard robot suit and spooning Loki, Tony finally stumbled back into his apartment after hours of meetings and found the whole place smelling of…

            Breakfast. Specifically, pancakes.

            He wandered down the corridor, shedding his jacket and tie on the way and undoing the first few buttons of his shirt, suspicious and intruiged.

            He’d had to leave really early in the morning – well, before 11, which totally counted as early – for the sort of meetings he hadn’t been able to reschedule with the excuse _I’ve got to throw a birthday party for the object of my hopeless unrequited affections._

            There’d been myriad Carters and Carter-related people sleeping all over the place when he’d left. It wasn’t that strange an idea that they would still be there, though even for them the use and abuse of Tony’s kitchen to make pancakes was a little bizarre.

            He rounded the corner, fully expecting to see Hawk – the most culinary Carter by a good mile – and stopped dead in his tracks.

            Steve was standing in a bright burst of sunshine coming from the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at his back. The light made his horrific bedhead glow fire and gold, dripped and soaked the skin of his back and arms as he poured batter into a frying pan. It gilded him, made him seem bright and holy, and the noise Tony made might’ve been a prayer.

            Steve was in Tony’s kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of striped white-and-blue boxers slung low on his hips. Very low.

            He had also apparently managed to work out how to use Tony’s soundsystem, as the whole ‘heavenly visitation’ vibe was being aided by the soft, cheerful sound of some kind of swing music.

            ‘You’re cooking breakfast.’

            Steve flipped a pancake so hard it stuck to the ceiling and spun around, brandishing the pan as a weapon. When his sleep-blurred eyes focused, he blushed and put it carefully back down, waved awkwardly.

            ‘Um. Yeah, sorry. Is that ok?’

            ‘It’s fine.’ Tony came up beside him, nudged him gently out of the way with his hip and pressed the button that made coffee appear on the machine next to the stove. It was a magic machine. ‘Are you really only awake now?’

            ‘I am very extremely hungover.’ Steve scrubbed his face with his hands and Tony may have watched the way his muscles bunched and stretched with the motion. ‘I didn’t… do anything outrageous last night?’

            ‘You don’t remember?’

            ‘Not much. I… ah, I remember giving you my dogtags.’

            Instinctively, Tony’s hand jumped to where they were resting against his skin. They’d been there, warm and solid and with Steve’s name on them, all day. He’d touched them, instead of the scar, when he’d needed grounding. When he’d been annoyed or claustrophobic.

            He had remembered how soft Steve’s gaze had been, how gentle his big, strong hands had been placing them around Tony’s neck. Steve had been drunk, Tony knew, but he also knew that if he had to give the tags back he might cry.

            ‘Do you want them?’ he asked, oh-so-casual.

            Steve looked horrified. ‘You don’t want them?’

            ‘I didn’t say that!’

            ‘You want to give them back.’

            ‘I don’t ever want to take them off again, but if you didn’t mean to give them to me…’

            Tony trailed off, feeling his skin burn with embarassment, and busied himself putting a diabetes-causing amount of sugar in his coffee.

            There was a moment’s silence, and then he felt something that made his heart stutter.

            Steve stood too close, pressing his chest to Tony’s back, and wrapped his arms around him, pressed his cheek between Tony’s shoulderblades.

            ‘I want you to have them. God, I feel like crap.’

            ‘You drank everything, Steve. I’m not surprised.’

            How was it possible that Steve being so close was making Tony simultaneously want to hyperventilate and relax backwards into his arms? He compromised and took a deep drink of coffee.

            ‘Did I do anything awful?’

            _You made Peggy cry because she loves you so much_ , Tony wanted to say. _You almost did the same thing to me. You made Loki and Tasha smile, when both of them aren’t the kind to suffer other human beings, and you danced with a beautiful Scandanavian Amazonian woman for hours._

            ‘You danced with Sif,’ he said, swallowing his coffee. At this back, Steve’s groan made his ribs vibrate.

            ‘I always wind up dancing with Sif. She didn’t leave any bruises, did she?’

            ‘Not that I can see,’ Tony said snippily, and Steve tensed, then laughed, warm and perfect.

            ‘You’re jealous.’

            ‘Shut up.’

            ‘You _are._ You’re jealous of Sif. You wish I’d danced with you.’

            ‘Shut up. I am not your best gal, waiting for her fella to take her dancing.’

            With strong, deft hands, Steve spun Tony round so they were facing. Tony nearly dropped his coffee cup, and made a soft, helpless noise of protest when Steve took it from him and placed it back on the counter.

            ‘No,’ Steve said softly. ‘You’re my fella. And I’ve been waiting. So how’s about that dance?’

            ‘Um,’ Tony explained eloquently. ‘Aargle.’

            Steve’s hands were taking his, and it was like dancing with a dog on its hind legs, letting Steve use their joint hands to swing them both, pogo-ing around the kitchen until they were both breathless, and Tony demonstrated how to headbang, and Steve showed him how to do a jazz square. They did the robot, they hand-jived, they did the monkey and Tony may have played a little air-guitar as Steve played air-saxophone. Which wasn’t even a thing, but he did seem to be pretty into it.

            And he was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe when the tempo of the music changed and Steve grabbed his hand and spun him close to his chest, dragging one of his hands up to his shoulder and holding the other one, threading their fingers together.

            Steve was breathless, still grinning, the dark shadows under his eyes almost gone. He moved, and Tony matched and mirrored him without thinking, a childhood full of dance lessons coming back to the front of his mind without being beckoned. They waltzed by muscle memory, matching each other with no effort, dancing as if they had been meant as partners.

            The laughter faded and was replaced by something heavier. Tony tried to look over Steve’s shoulder – to look anywhere but into those stupid blue eyes – but Steve huffed out a noise of protest and cupped his jaw, dragged his gaze higher.

            ‘Hi,’ he said softly, and Tony blinked up at him, helpless and hopelessly lost.

            ‘Hi, Cap,’ he answered.

            Steve’s hand dropped from his cheek, and rested over the scar at Tony’s breastbone, partly exposed by the half-undone shirt.

            ‘I’m really not wearing very much,’ Steve murmured, and used that one hand to slowly – so slowly, giving Tony enough time to tell him no, to push him away and protect his ugly scars – unbutton the remains of the shirt. ‘Tell me to stop, Tony. Tell me, and I will.’

            Tony breathed through the sudden burst of panic. This was Steve. Other people might think the scar was horrifying, but Steve… Steve had given Tony his dogtags. He wouldn’t turn away from this.

            Those scars had brought him here, to this moment, breathing hard from laughter and want, and he wouldn’t regret them.

            Tony’s hand tentatively traced the thick cord of muscle at Steve’s throat, tried to hold on to him as the taller man pushed his shirt off his shoulders, held him at arm’s length and inspected him.

            And then there were gentle fingers tracing the mark, tracing the places that had been cut open and rebuilt.

            ‘You’re so beautiful.’

            ‘It’s scar tissue, Steve.’

            ‘It’s where you’ve been. It’s what made you. I know all about scar tissue, Tony. I think it’s beautiful.’

            The music swelled and Steve’s head ducked, Tony’s hand still at his throat, in control and feeling Steve swallow, hard. Steve pressed a soft, open-mouthed kiss to the circle-shaped mark in the centre of Tony’s chest, and Tony gasped.

            It felt… good. Even Pepper had never touched it like this, like she was grateful for it, like it was precious.

            Like every part of him, even the bits he thought were ugly and dark, was loved.

            Steve looked up, and his eyes took all of Tony’s breath away. Without thinking, painful arousal and love making him too honest, he whispered, ‘I’ve spent my whole life missing you, and never knowing it.’

            Which was a stupid thing to say, it was awful and honest and they were just flirting. This was flirting, right? He wasn’t supposed to ruin this closeness, this warmth, with his stupid over-eager love. He’d said something that he couldn’t take back and Steve was going to leave, and-

            Steve’s hands were on either side of his face, and he was looking at Tony as if he were impossibly brave, and when he pressed his lips to Tony’s it was the easiest thing in the world to sigh and lick his way deeper into Steve’s mouth, sink his fingertips into the warm skin at Steve’s hips and pull him closer.

            He tasted of blueberries and sun, and Tony groaned at how beautiful it was to use his tongue to trace the patterns inside Steve’s mouth, to use hands and chest and lips to learn everything, to memorise him.

            Steve bit his lower lip and then kissed it better, some strange sound bubbling up from his lungs Tony already knew he would have to spend a great deal of time trying to drag from him again.

            Somewhere faraway the music soared, and without thinking, Tony’s hips began to sway, his palms forcing Steve to join him, to move against him so close that the swing of their bodies caused friction against their skin.

            The rhythm they found was slow and sweet, so natural it came easier than their stuttering breath. With a muttered word that might have been, ‘screw it,’ Steve pressed himself closer, and Tony cried out with the sensation of having Steve’s arousal pressed against his own, rocking slowly to the swell and beat of the music. He held tighter to Steve’s hips, digging in his nails and leaving crescent-moon marks, and Steve stroked his face with one hand, held him close with the other.

            Steve breathed against his oversensitised lips, so close to him that he couldn’t see anything but bluesky eyes.

            Tony hesitated, somehow unsure even now of what he was permitted, and then Steve rolled his hips and ground his erection into Tony’s, and Tony gave up on questioning and leant upwards to capture Steve’s lips in a brutal, bruising kiss.

            His eyes drifted shut, trying to focus on the music, on the noise Steve made whenever he received enough friction, whenever Tony’s wicked tongue traced a shape in his mouth and begged to be sucked. He wanted to remember everything, from the sensation of Steve’s sunwarmed skin – and the cooler skin, when he dipped fingertips under the elastic of Steve’s shorts – to the scent of him, sleepy and sinful.

            Steve’s fingers cradled the back of his skull, tilted him back a little, and Tony’s heart couldn’t deal with this much stimulation. To know that Steve wanted him was one thing; to feel it against his hip while Steve used and abused his height and strength to get closer, to kiss deeper… it was too much. It was too perfect, and Tony really had no choice but to retaliate and push his hands past the elastic he’d been playing with and sink fingertips into the muscle of Steve’s ass.

            Which was everything he’d dreamt it would be, and more. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time to savour it before he found himself very cold and conspiciously without Steve.

            He blinked and swayed, stared at where Steve was standing, maybe two paces away.

            He was so beautiful. He was a Greek statue, flushed red and with a really – oh, god – impressive tent in the front of boxers with an obvious wet spot on the front.

            Tony wanted to do bad things with him, to him, beside him while he watched. Which begged the question… why was he over there?

            ‘Tell me to stop, Tony,’ Steve growled, and Tony wondered if he knew how much that sounded like a challenge. _Come on, punk, make my day_.

            Tony grinned, because Steve had to have worked out by now that you didn’t just lay down a challenge like that to Tony Fucking Stark.

            He reached to the waist of his pants and undid the belt and clasp, licking his lips when he saw Steve’s eyes follow the motion.

            In one easy, practiced movement, he’d pushed them down and was standing extremely very naked in his own kitchen. Briefly, it occurred to him that maybe he should be self-concious; maybe he should try and cover the scar with his hands. Before he could act upon it, Steve was pressing him bodily back into the kitchen island, one of his big hands on the scar and the other – after a heartbeat’s hesitation – closing around his cock.

            Steve swallowed Tony’s cry with a strangely chaste kiss, and then murmured, ‘please don’t hide from me.’ He twisted his hand, and Tony fell forward, trusting the taller man to take his weight, to catch him. His lips and teeth found the column of Steve’s neck, and he bit down to stifle another gasp. ‘God, Tony. You’re… ah, you’re so perfect. Stay with me.’

            Tony wasn’t sure what he was being asked – his mind was short-circuiting, everything too bright and too good – so he compromised and pushed Steve’s shorts to the floor.

            In an instant, he had his hand wrapped around the length of Steve, learning him, and his mouth was dry. Steve was the fucking all-American wet dream, long and thick, and Tony kissed the point of his jaw as he used his thumb to smooth precum around the head of Steve’s cock.

            He wanted to choke on it, to ride it, to fucking spend a weekend worshipping it, but he was too close and from the shivers running through Steve and the little cries forcing their way past his lips. He pushed Steve’s hand away and lined their erections up, wrapped his hand around both and moved his hips, grabbed Steve’s face and forced their lips together. He wanted everything, wanted to feel every part of Steve, and Steve just wrapped his arms around his back, held him like someone was trying to pull them apart.

            Their breath came faster and faster and when Tony’s knees buckled and his hand slipped, Steve took his place and kissed his shoulder, holding him up with one hand. ‘It’s alright. I’ve got you.’

            Tony gasped, and then buried his face in the warm place at the base of Steve’s neck, a shudder running through his body too fast and hard to be anything but impossibly _good_. ‘I know. I know you do.’

            He swallowed the sound Steve made as he came and it tasted too good – felt too good, to feel Steve shiver and buckle and know that was his fault – not to follow him over the edge.

            They stood there for a long moment, Steve still supporting most of his body weight, until it became too uncomfortable.

            Steve lifted his hand – even that seemed like too much effort to Tony – and traced the dogtags where they rested against Tony’s chest.

            ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean for it to go like that.’

            Tony tensed. ‘I swear to god, Steve, if you tell me you just want to be friends –‘

            ‘No!’ The yell was too loud in the echoing kitchen, and Steve blushed, fisted the dogtags and kissed the place below Tony’s ear. ‘No. I just meant that I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you things – important things – before… this.’

            ‘But this was good?’

            Steve sucked on Tony’s neck and made him jump. He hummed happily. ‘This was very good.’

            Tony relaxed a little. ‘Do you want a shower? I feel like we could both use a shower.’

            His heart almost stopped, because Steve dipped a fingertip into the mess on his stomach and brought it to his lips.

            ‘Hmm,’ he agreed, softly, looking anywhere but into Tony’s eyes. ‘You could have a point.’

            Well. There wasn’t much he could say to that, really, except grabbing Steve by the ears and licking the taste of them both out of his mouth. By the time he pulled away, they were both panting again and Tony couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was he was supposed to be doing.

            Oh. Yeah, the stickiness. ‘Go have a shower in the room I dumped your sorry ass in last night,’ he said affectionately, carding his hands through blond hair because _he was allowed to_. ‘I’ve got to get something.’

            ‘Something?’

            ‘Birthday present.’

            ‘Oh.’ Steve kissed him again, held him almost tight enough to leave bruises. ‘You’re not my present?’

            Tony let out a strangled sort of sigh. ‘Goddamnit, Steve, could you please stop being adorable and go take a shower?’

            ‘Can’t stop the adorableness, sweetheart,’ Steve said, grinning, and wandered away.

            Tony watched him walk away. Because it was a _naked Steve_ , in _his apartment_. Watching him walk away was just… gravy.

            He went to his own room, jumped in the shower and no one in the history of running water had ever showered so quickly. He was out in a flash, towel wrapped around his hips and showergel in his left eye as he rifled through his stupid desk trying to find the envelope he knew was in there somewhere.

            It hadn’t actually been that hard, in the end, to figure out what kind of gift he could get Steve that could compete with Bruce’s, or Peggy’s. He might not have known him for very long, but Tony _knew_ Steve. He was beginning to realise how skilled a liar Steve was, and that he was one of the very few who saw him honest.

            That honesty dragged more of the same out of Tony, and it was terrifying, and it hurt, but if it resulted in being kissed, he could cope.

            He paused. Steve had kissed him. Scratch that, Steve had rubbed off against him, whispering his name into his neck.

            It was Christmas and all good things, today. It was the best day.

            ‘Tony?’ Steve’s voice made Tony whip round, his hand clenched around the envelope. ‘Why are you… blinky?’

            ‘Showergel in my eye.’

            ‘Let me see.’ Steve stepped too close, and Tony realised with a shock that he was wearing one of Tony’s baggiest old band t-shirts – _Placebo_ , stolen from a massive angry roadie – and a pair of sweats that barely fit him. He was wearing Tony’s clothes, and the feeling that blossomed in his ribs was almost unbearable. ‘You’re such an idiot sometimes.’

            ‘I’m a genius!’ Tony protested.

            Steve kissed his eyelid, then his mouth, gentle and delicate as if Tony would break from rough handling.

            Something they both now knew to be categorically untrue.

            ‘Doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot. Is that my present?’

            Tony blinked, then looked down at the envelope held tight in his hand. ‘Yeah. Um, don’t… don’t freak out?’

            ‘Why does everyone keep giving me gifts they think will make me freak out?’ Steve wondered, prising Tony’s fingers open and taking the envelope.

            Which was full of a stupid idea. Tony’s heart beat erratically, demanding he snatch it back and buy Steve a pony instead. Something, anything, that didn’t show so much of his hand.

            ‘Tony. What is this?’

            ‘It’s a letter from Columbia.’

            ‘I can see that. What does it mean?’

            ‘It means I set up a scholarship. Two kids every year, from immigrant families or difficult backgrounds, get full rides to study whatever subject they want. Accomodation, school fees, living allowance and… I guess they’ll need Subway passes?’

            ‘It says… it says it’s the _Lieutenant James Barnes Memorial Scholarship_ ,’ Steve said, his voice strange.

            ‘You were scared you’d forget him. Now… now there’ll be two more kids, every year, who won’t forget him. They’ll remember that name for the rest of their lives, and be grateful to him. From what you’ve said, I thought… I thought he would’ve approved.’

            Steve stared at him, for such a long time that Tony began to shiver from the cold of the water on his back drying.

            Then, as sudden as floodgates breaking, Steve was kissing him, holding him as if he were the last good thing in the world. The last thing holding him grounded, the last thing keeping him sane.

            ‘It’s perfect. It’s… God, Tony.’ Steve was crying, and Tony couldn’t stand it – he pawed at the tears, tried to rub them away.

            ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry-‘

            ‘I love you.’

            They stared at each other, the silence thick, and then Tony managed to squeak, ‘ _what_?’

            ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s too soon. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it, and I wanted you to know. I wanted you to have it, even if you don’t want it. I wanted… to give you what’s left of me.’ Steve’s hand was a cradle against his cheek, and instinct had Tony turning into it, kissing the palm. ‘I love you so much. You make everything brighter. I know I’m not a prize – I’m broken, and I’m healing really slowly. But you make me feel strong, Tony.’

            Tony held Steve’s hand closer, and stared into his eyes, feeling lost at sea. ‘This isn’t supposed to be how it works.’

            Steve blinked. ‘What do you mean?’

            ‘I’m supposed to pine after you, I’m supposed to want you and love you so much it tears me apart. I’m supposed to… keep you safe, and stay away from your heart. I’m supposed to protect you.’

            ‘I don’t need to be protected. I need you.’ There was something angry in Steve’s voice – it was the same way he’d spoken to Tony when he’d been joking about the artificial liver being designed by R&D. ‘Are you going to be a coward, Stark?’  

            ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ He pulled Steve closer, slid his hands under the hem of Steve’s shirt, drawing in the warmth and comfort from his skin. ‘I can’t let you go.’

            ‘Then don’t.’ Steve whispered it into his ear. ‘Fight for me, and I’ll fight for you. Nothing worth having ever came easy. I won’t let you leave me. Not now I know…’

            ‘I love you. So damned much, Steve, it’s insane. It’s not normal. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to people like me. We don’t lose our hearts after three weeks and we don’t get happily ever afters.’

            ‘Good, ‘cause this isn’t a fucking fairy tale.’ Steve kissed him, his tongue wicked and dirty. ‘This is life, and it’s going to be hard. But I want it to be with you, because I think it’ll be so much better that way. I’m willing to give everything to that.’

            ‘You’re braver than I am.’

            ‘No.’ Steve spoke the word against Tony’s mouth, letting him lipread. ‘I’m so scared. You could ruin me, if you wanted to. But it’s worth it. You’re worth it.’

            It was so similar to the thought Tony had had before, waiting for Steve to drive him to get burgers, that his heart seemed to calm. For the first time, possibly in his life, it didn’t seem complicated.

            He didn’t have to be a genius to understand this. This was the simplest thing in the world; it was Steve. It just fit, in a way nothing ever had.

            Tony curled into Steve’s embrace, and for the longest time, they just stood there, Steve’s cheek pressed against the top of Tony’s head, their arms wrapped tight around each other, savouring the fact that this was permitted. Steve’s fingers smoothed patterns into Tony’s bare back, warming him, and he whispered things. Nonsense things, just sounds, and Tony’s name, over and over.

            He didn’t promise anything. That was good – Tony wasn’t sure if he could bear any more promises, not today.

            ‘I missed you, too,’ Steve murmured. ‘All my life, I’ve missed you.’

            Tony pulled at the collar of Steve’s shirt, the fabric between them suddenly unbearable, and felt Steve chuckle before he left Tony just long enough to pull it over his head and then drag Tony close again.

            ‘Better, sweetheart?’

            ‘I thought you didn’t like pet names,’ Tony grumbled, pressing himself against Steve’s beating heart, his mind calculating its beat, its rhythm, memorising the sound of Steve’s life.

            ‘I like reminding you that you’re my sweetheart,’ Steve said, too sweet, and then they were both laughing. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t seem to stop saying stupid things. I sound like a Valentine’s card.’

            ‘I like it. I’m so gorgeous I make you all fluffy and pathetic.’ Then, because Steve was grinning and he wanted to know that that tasted like, he kissed his Captain. ‘Who’d’ve thought that the big, strong soldier would be such a kitten?’

            ‘Um, literally everyone? I bake apple pies and you saw the presents my brothers and Tasha got for me. They all compete to try and get me to cry.’

            ‘I don’t like it when you cry.’

            ‘I know.’ Steve cupped the back of his head, kissed him deeper. ‘You must be freezing. You’re wearing a towel.’

            ‘Yeah, but you’re like a human radiator. I’m really glad you’re warm again, Steve.’

            Steve blinked at him, and belatedly, Tony realised that didn’t make any sense. He’d thought it, often, but never said it.

            ‘I mean… look, when you came to the workshop that first time and I did a sock-slide into you-‘

            ‘I _knew_ it. What idiot does a sock-slide in an autoshop?’

            ‘This kind of idiot, obviously. Anyway, all I could think, over and over was that… you looked cold. All the way through, like you’d been frozen. Your eyes were like ice and when I met your family, I couldn’t understand how they didn’t see it. How they couldn’t see how cold you were.’

            Steve’s smile was slow and small. ‘And you think I’m warm, now?’

            ‘Yeah. You have been for a while. It was slow, but now…’

            Steve kissed Tony’s neck, and he must’ve forgotten to use the disposable razor in the guest room, because his whiskers tickled in a way that made his stomach twist and heat.

            ‘It’s because of you. You know that, right? You helped me find my feet again. For a while there… I didn’t think it could get better. I loved him so much. Losing him was like losing myself – I didn’t know how to be anything without him.’

            Tony shivered and cuddled closer. He was not going to be jealous of a dead man – he was better than that.

            Steve continued, softly, ‘I think I was more damaged than I knew by… by everything. The war… it tore me apart. Even before Bucky. I’ll never be sorry for fighting for my country, but I was never certain what I was fighting for. Now… now I think it might’ve been you. I was fighting to get here.’ He blushed scarlet – Tony felt his face heat – and hid his face in the flesh of Tony’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, this is all –‘

            Tony caught Steve’s face and forced him to meet his gaze. ‘No. You don’t apologise for being honest, Steve. Not to me. Told you you not to apologise. I want… I want to know all of you. Even the scars. I want you honest.’

            ‘That’s good,’ Steve said on a sigh. ‘I don’t think I know another way to be, with you. Can we…’

            ‘Can we what, soldier?’

            ‘Could we get into the bed? I know it’s the middle of the day, but I’m still hungover, and…’

            He was cut off by Tony’s quick, dirty kiss. ‘It is always acceptable to spend an afternoon cuddling under a feather duvet.’

            Tony grabbed a pair of sweats from the dresser – because he was a classy bastard, and they _had_ only been together for about half an hour – and when he turned round, he had to check his pacemaker was still working.

            Because Steve was sitting, shirtless, in his bed and was peacefully arranging pillows into a fussy formation. It looked so… domestic. It looked right.

            He wanted Steve to still be there in fifty years, when they were both wrinkly and weird and possibly with many fancy cats maintained by a team of billionaire-worthy cat maintenance people and named after heavy metal guitarists. He wanted to fuck Steve in that bed thousands of times, always trying to get a little closer, to know him a little better. He wanted a future with him, and in that moment, it seemed so clear that the idea that it could be taken away made him terrified, even as he felt happiness like a new heartbeat in his ribs, bliss-bright and so strong.

            ‘You’ve got a weird look on your face, Tony.’

            ‘Do you think there’s such a thing as a cat maintenance person?’

            Steve, to his eternal credit, just looked thoughtful. ‘Like vets or pet groomers?’

            ‘Yeah, but one who also makes it all fed and watered. Like a full cat support staff.’

            ‘I’m pretty sure even if it’s not a thing, you can pay some poor grad student to do it. Why do you ask?’

            Tony crawled into the bed and in a moment of hesitation Steve grabbed him and manoevered him into… the comfiest cuddling position like, ever. The man was a pillow wizard.

            ‘You’re a pillow wizard,’ Tony said to one of Steve’s pecs. Possibly Perky.

            ‘Tony. Why are you thinking about cats?’

            ‘I like cats. When we’re old we could get cats, but I don’t want to have to be busy maintaining the damned things. I could hire someone to do it for us, so we can just do the… stroking and stuff.’

            Steve was quiet for a long moment, and then pressed a kiss to Tony’s shoulder. ‘I’d like that.’

            ‘Good.’ Suddenly, Tony was exhausted. With the party, he suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept properly. ‘Will you stay with me?’

            ‘Always,’ Steve said.

            And Tony absolutely believed him.


	9. Two Phonecalls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a day spent in bed, and a hospital waiting room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much smut, you guys. Also some hospitals and a child in distress, so just be safe.

It was dark when Steve woke up, and for a second, he was completely disorientated, his entire body going stiff and tense with old instinct as he grabbed beneath the pillow for his bowie knife.

            There was nothing there, and he began to panic, his eyes taking too long to adjust to the dark room and no comforting weapon in his hand. He was sweating; his breathing was coming too fast, and he had to tell himself to calm down, to assess, to try and take in more information.

            It wasn’t silent in the room. There was another person’s breathing as well as his own – rhythmic, calm. Not the breathing of a prisoner; maybe that of a captor?

            He was warm. The room was warm, not some cold, damp cave. Not the dry, freezing cold of the desert after dark.

            It was warm, and comfortable, and he was lying on soft sheets, navy blue and high thread-count. _This is not a cage_ , he told himself, trying to believe it.

            His eyes adjusted, and he realised that the breathing was coming from someone sharing the huge bed with him, and that it had changed.

            The other person had woken, and was holding their breath.

            ‘Steve,’ the voice – it was so familiar, and he relaxed without knowing why – murmured. ‘Hey, Steve. Where have you gone?’

            He looked down beside him, and felt his breath get swept away even as the nightmare faded.

            Tony was propped up on his elbow, his dark eyes wide with concern, his hair all over the place. He had Steve’s dogtags around his neck and lovebites coloring his collarbone and shoulders, and he was the most perfect thing.

            Even if this was hell, even if it was prison, it couldn’t be too bad. Tony was here, with him.

            ‘Can I touch you?’ Tony asked softly, and Steve nodded, his throat too dry to speak. Tony sat up tall and drew Steve down onto the bed, pulled him into strong mechanic’s arms and held him close without caging him. ‘Tell me.’

            The command was softly spoken, but it was an order, and the relief of knowing what to do – what to say – made Steve relax still further, closer to Tony, absorbing the rhythm of the smaller man’s heartbeat and breath.

            Tony was scared. He prayed it wasn’t because he was scared of him.

            ‘I didn’t know where I was.’

            ‘You’re here with me. You’re in my bed, in my home, and you’re safe. I’ll keep you safe.’

            Tony was smaller, wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t as strong as Steve. And yet Steve believed him, completely.

            ‘I’m in your bed,’ he repeated, and then he was grinning, pressing his lips to the centre of Tony’s chest, over the scar. ‘That’s pretty cool.’

            Tony chuckled and the vibrations went all the way through Steve’s body. ‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it? We slept all the way through the afternoon, Cap.’

            Steve shivered and Tony’s hands moved from where they were stroking equations into the soldier’s shoulders to pull the blankets over them both.

            ‘You love me,’ he said, wanting to hear it again.

            It didn’t seem real. And yet there wasn’t anything more real that the feeling of Tony’s lips against his forehead, Tony’s hand on the back of his neck, holding him like he might slip away.

            ‘I love you, idiot,’ Tony confirmed softly. ‘What now?’

            Steve considered it, and the first thought that occurred made him blush scarlet and try to hide it in Tony’s chest.

            ‘Whoa. Wait. I really, really want to know what made that blush. Pretty please?’

            ‘I’ll tell you in a little while,’ Steve said, and – because he was allowed, because he’d wanted it for so long and the wanting was stronger now than ever – he leant up on his elbows and kissed Tony, deep and dirty and using every cheap trick in his short but punchy playbook.

            When he pulled away, to smile down at Tony, he found the smile fading. Instead, he reached out and stroked with his fingertips the planes of Tony’s face, so impossibly pretty and pure in the dark.

            ‘I love you, too,’ he told the shell of Tony’s ear, drawing a strange sort of sigh out of the other man. ‘I like being allowed to say it.’

            ‘You were always allowed. I’ve never been able to deny you anything.’

            ‘I know.’ Steve kissed the jumping pulse in Tony’s neck and hummed. ‘You’re smitten. You’re lost for me, head over heels.’

            ‘Smug bastard,’ Tony said, affectionately, and grabbed his ass.

            Steve hummed and lowered his weight so he was pressing the length of his body against Tony’s, pressing him into the mattress.

            ‘Can we order takeout?’

            Tony made a sort of _meep_ ing noise, possibly because with his hands on Steve’s hips he was able to feel the excellent muscle control that particular roll of his spine had taken.

            ‘You’re negotiating again, aren’t you? You’re… you’re freaking unbelievable.’

            ‘I’m your match,’ Steve said, hearing the contentment coloring his own voice as if from outside his body. He couldn’t remember ever hearing himself sound so happy. ‘I want pizza.’

            ‘Eurgh, no. I’ve seen you with pizza, it’s disgusting. You order anchovies and pick them off the cheese. If you think I’m sucking face with you after that you’re insane.’

            Steve used one hand to smooth up the side of Tony’s waist, up his ribs, rubbed his thumb experimentally over the rise of Tony’s nipple.

            ‘Moroccan,’ Tony managed, then grabbed Steve by the ears and kissed him, his tongue tracing alpha and omega against Steve’s.

            Steve pinched the aforementioned nipple and when Tony broke away to gasp in air, he dipped his head and licked it, feeling Tony’s fingers fist in his hair and his chest shudder.

            ‘Chinese.’

            ‘Fuck you,’ Tony managed, and Steve laughed, rolled his hips.

            ‘Ask nicely, then,’ he said, and one quick movement had Tony above him, his eyes warm and blurred.

            Steve had never seen anything so lovely, and he couldn’t resist the urge to stroke his knuckles across the sharp line of Tony’s jaw.

            ‘You’re all talk, sweetheart. Put your money where your mouth is.’

            Tony blinked, and then grinned. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.’

            ‘I could draw you a diagram if you’re struggling?’ Steve offered sweetly.

            In half a heartbeat, Tony had stripped them both of the annoying sweats they were wearing – and that had to be a new rule: no pants in bed – and then he was pressed against Steve, hot and hard and _his._ All coherent thought fled along with the very last of Steve’s Catholic guilt, and he was moaning, falling apart with each roll of Tony’s hips, each kiss the other man held him down and made him take.

            ‘You know exactly what you do to me, don’t you?’ Tony whispered into his ear, and Steve was faintly aware that one of his hands was in the bedside table rummaging around. ‘Such a beautiful soldier, begging like a whore.’

            His kiss was loving, praising, and Steve desperately tried to bring him closer, to let him know. ‘Yours, Tony. Only yours.’

            ‘I know, baby. I can barely believe how lucky I am, but I know.’

            And then he was gone, and Steve almost cried from the loss of skin and heat until he felt a tongue tracing the curve of his navel.

            ‘You have to talk to me, baby. You have to tell me what’s good, what’s too much. Promise me.’

            ‘I promise,’ Steve whispered to the ceiling, because Tony was calling him _baby_ as if he were precious and it made him feel raw and open and as if he’d agree to pretty much anything right now. He wanted Tony inside of him so badly he felt hollow and empty. ‘Please, Tony.’

            ‘Please what?’

            ‘ _Anything_. I need you – your fingers, your cock, something, _anything_. Please. Please just fuck me, make me yours.’ And then Tony’s mouth was on his hip, and his brain short-circuited and failed to inform his tongue. ‘I want you so badly, Tony.’

            Tony licked a stripe up the side of Steve’s cock and said, ‘you’re perfect. You’re so perfect, baby.’

            And then he was swallowing Steve down, even as one lubed finger – and when in hell had he done that? – pushed into him and everything went white with hot pleasure.

            He would write odes to that fucking mouth. He would sing its praises in Times Square, dressed as an underpants cowboy. Except… except he was shit at poetry, so he’d have to draw what he was seeing, Tony’s mouth stretched too wide around his cock and those eyes – those clever, loved eyes – wicked and smiling at him.

            And he would display it for the world to see. Except then he’d have to kill them all, because no one was allowed to see Tony like this except for him.

            Tony did something sort of… twisty, both with his fingers – now two – and his mouth, and Steve was crying out, his mind blank of anything but a chorus of _Tonytonytonyohgodlove._

            ‘You close, baby?’ Suddenly, Tony’s mouth was on Steve’s, and Steve keened, clung to him and licked his own taste out of the other man’s mouth. ‘Fuck, Steve.’

            ‘Yeah. Yes, please. Now.’

            ‘You’re not ready-‘

            Steve bit Tony’s lip and pulled at it a little, tracing over the hurt with his tongue to soothe it. ‘Trust me. Do you have-‘

            Tony took his hand and guided it lower, Steve automatically closing his hand around Tony’s dick and stroking the smooth texture of the condom. He sighed, half from relief that they wouldn’t have to wait longer, and half from the disappointment of the barrier.

            ‘Someday soon,’ Tony promised, then hissed as Steve moved his hand, stroking him slow and matching the rhythm of the three finger scissoring in his ass. ‘I can’t… now?’

            Steve locked one foot around Tony’s hip and guided him, impatient and hungry.

            And then he was being filled, slowly and with the strength in Tony’s shoulders shivering under Steve’s palms and fingernails. He grabbed a fistfull of Tony’s hair, forced brown eyes to meet blue, and saw the shock and adoration there in the moment when they were completely joined.

            ‘Are you alright? I didn’t-‘

            ‘I’ll tell you if you ever hurt me, sweetheart,’ Steve managed, and his voice sounded faraway and strange. ‘Trust me. Trust me, and _move_.’

            Slow strokes, uneven and awkward as they learn the movement of each other’s bodies, and then Tony found some angle where the tip of him kept stroking a bundle of nerves deep inside of Steve and nothing had ever been this good. It was like losing his virginity – like losing the last vestiges of an old life, screaming all of the darkness, sand and blood out of his body and replacing it with something better. He left bruises on Tony’s hips and guided him deeper, forced him faster, and their lips were together, not quite kissing, sounds and breath passing between them and being swallowed down.

            ‘ _Steve_ ,’ Tony whispered, and it was a prayer. It was a promise.

            It would be enough. The future was faraway, a dark, frightening presence, and Steve knew there would be more nights where he woke afraid and dangerous. He knew there’d be arguments, but that was alright, as long as there could be negotiations.

            He would not let this go. He moved against Tony, trying to feel him deeper, trying to scratch the itch that had begun with those stupid eyes and those stupid reindeer socks. He would fight for this.

            He sucked on Tony’s tongue and fucked himself on Tony’s cock and felt like he knew where he was supposed to be.

            And then, too suddenly, it was too much and Tony was hitting that spot on each thrust and he was leaning down, pressing his forhead into Steve’s shoulder and biting down, muttering, ‘stroke yourself, baby. Let me see you come.’

            The command somehow filtered through the mind-numbing bliss and Steve was jacking off in counterrhythm to Tony and it only took three strokes before he was crying out, eyes wide open and able to see the expression on Tony’s face as he fucked Steve through his orgasm, until it was almost too sensitive and still somehow felt right, felt good.

            Steve grabbed his neck and dragged him down, kissed him and murmured against his lips, ‘now. That’s an order, soldier.’

            Tony’s eyes shot open with surprise and then he was coming, collapsing on Steve, a warm and proper weight, exactly where he was supposed to be.

            Steve hummed happily, blissed out, and arranged Tony neatly, within kissing distance and sprawled across Steve’s chest. He was softening inside Steve, and when he wriggled and pulled out, Steve struggled not to feel bereft.

            In a moment he was back, and snuggling down into Steve’s warmth, his teeth gently nipping a mark onto Steve’s collarbone.

            ‘Um,’ Tony said, then seemed to collapse further down. ‘That was unbelievable. Like… I think the earth moved. Did the earth move? Or possibly moved faster, I mean, it always moves.’

            He yawned prettily, and Steve kissed the tip of his nose, so happy his chest felt like it was over-inflated. ‘I’m going to order Chinese food. What do you want?’

            Tony blinked up at him blearily and then got distracted by tracing the mark he’d just made with his calloused forefinger. Steve shivered.

            ‘I did not agree to that.’

            ‘Do you want to argue about it?’ Steve asked sweetly.

            Tony opened his mouth and then sighed. ‘Can’t. Too sleepy. Fine, you fickle temptress, bring me sweet and sour prawns and know that you are a terrible human being.’

            Steve kissed his frowning mouth and grabbed his cell phone to dial for food. The order was made more difficult by Tony taking it upon himself to lick Steve clean of the sticky mess of cum covering his chest and stomach, but after a few times saying, ‘no, Sir, when I say “Oh, God, there,” I do not mean you-‘ the order was placed and Steve had Tony flat on his back and Tony’s cock halfway down his throat.

            Later – in the middle of the night, sitting wrapped in bedsheets in the middle of a mattress and eating noodles from cardboard boxes – Tony asked him again.

            ‘What now, Steve? We can’t just hide here forever. Even if that does seem like to only reasonable plan right now.’

            Steve swallowed a mouthfull of noodles and licked his lips, grinned when Tony followed the motion. They’d already allowed the food to go cold before eating it, and every muscle in Steve’s body was loose and warm.

            ‘I want to train as an art teacher,’ he said, a truth he’d barely even admitted to himself. He glanced at Tony, half expecting derision, but all he saw was a beaming, pleased smile, like Tony thought Steve had just figured out something brilliant. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

            Tony dumped his prawns and climbed easily into Steve’s lap, settling there like he belonged and giving Steve a long, soy sauce flavoured kiss.

            ‘That’s the _best_ idea. You’re so great with kids, and you’re incredibly talented. You’d be the best teacher.’

            ‘I’m going to live with Peggy. While I train. I’ll get a job, and I’ll pay my way through. And then… then we’ll talk again. Once I’m qualified, and I’ve got a proper job, we’ll talk again.’

            Tony looked at him consideringly. ‘I know you need to be independent. Will you let me treat you, sometimes, though?’

            Steve kissed him, stroking a slow circle into his lower back. ‘Of course you can.’

            ‘Good. I like that. Maybe you’ll become a famous artist, and then _I’ll_ be the kept man.’ Tony made a sound something like a purr, and then stiffened. ‘What do you mean, “and then we’ll talk”?’

            Steve’s heart beat a little faster – this thing was still too young to feel strong – but he swallowed it and smiled. ‘I’m playing the long game, Tony.’

            ‘You’ll make an honest man out of me?’

            ‘I can’t work magic. But I’ll marry you, if you’ll have me, someday.’

            Tony’s mouth opened, then closed, then he hugged Steve hard enough to crush a lesser man’s ribs and whispered to his chest, ‘I don’t think you’re real.’

            None-too-gently, Steve pinched him on the ass, and Tony jumped and then glowered as Steve struggled not to laugh like a lunatic.

            ‘You are really lucky you’re cute, jackass,’ Tony muttered.

            Steve’s phone rang, somewhere in the bed, and he scrambled to answer it even as Tony refused to release his monkey-like grip on him, muttering obscenities and insults under his breath.

            The picture was of Peter with his face painted as a spiderweb – it was a photo Peggy had sent him last Hallowe’en, and Steve loved the expression on his little brother’s face. Part sugar-rush, part love for the woman holding the camera.

            He answered it and _shush_ ed Tony. ‘Hey, Peter. What’s up?’

            The noise on the other end of the line made Steve’s heart stutter. It was, unmistakeably, the sound of a little boy crying.

            ‘Stevie, she’s not moving. I called 991 and I tried CPR like Jane taught us when Bruce was sick, but she’s still not moving, and I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.’

            Steve was standing before he knew he’d moved, Tony sitting on the bed with a concerned, confused expression.

            ‘Peter. Listen to me – are you alone? Where’s Clint?’

            ‘Hawk went to Mr Coulson’s house for dinner. It was just me and Mom, and then she fell over and she’s not moving, Steve.’

            ‘I’ll be there. Just… just stay with her, kid. I’ll be there before you can shake a stick, do you hear me? It’s going to be ok.’

            ‘Ok. Steve, I’m scared.’

            ‘I know, Petey. Don’t worry, I’ll be there.’

            Peter hung up, and Steve ignored everything, ran through the house to find his clothes, dragging them on and cursing.

            ‘Here. You can’t wear those, they stink of alcohol.’ Tony calmly handed him a clean oversized t-shirt, sweats and a hooded sweater. ‘I’ve got Happy waiting downstairs to take us.’

            ‘You don’t have to-‘

            ‘If you say I don’t have to come I’m going to fucking slap you. She is my godmother and you are not going to do this alone. Not while I’m still breathing.’

            Steve shivered and almost collapsed, stopped only by Tony grabbing him and keeping him up. ‘Tony, what if she’s not ok?’

            ‘Then we work it out. Right now, we’ve got to get to Peter. Listen to me, Steve. You’ve got to hold it together for that kid.’

            Tony was already dressed – Steve had no idea how – and typing into his phone a million miles a minute, to God knows who. Steve’s mind was blank again, this time because thought _hurt_ , as he struggled into the slightly too-small loaned clothing and hurried with Tony out of the apartment and into the waiting car.

            Happy drove like a man possessed, and the journey was silent, except for a moment after about a minute when Tony took Steve’s hand and stroked his thumb over his knuckles.

            ‘Don’t tell me everything’s going to be alright. I can’t… I can’t have you lie to me,’ Steve managed to choke out, and Tony nodded, his thumb never ceasing it’s gentling.

            ‘I love you, and I’m here with you. You’re not alone.’

            Steve suddenly felt like crying – he was so scared and such a short time ago it had been so _good_ – but instead he breathed, deep, and clung to Tony like a lifeline.

            There was an ambulance outside the building, and Tony didn’t let go of his hand, even when he was running up the stairs and arguing with the paramedic, too loud and yelling at a poor woman only trying to do her job because-

            ‘It’s my mother and little brother. What’s happened?’

            Immediately, the woman’s face softened. ‘You must be Steve. Peter’s been asking for you.’

            ‘Where is he?’

            ‘He’s fine. He’s inside, with your neighbor – Dr Abraham Erskine?’

            Erskine. Steve should’ve told Peter to call Erskine, should’ve been in charge of that, but beside him, Tony said softly, ‘I called Abe. I asked him to come over and take care of Peter.’

            ‘Please, ma’am. What’s happened?’

            ‘Your mother had a stroke, Mr Carter. She’s in the ambulance downstairs, they’re about to take her to hospital.’

            ‘She’s alive?’

            The paramedic seemed uncomfortable. ‘Yes. Your little brother may very well have saved her life, but it’ll be touch-and-go for the next few hours. If she has another stroke this massive, she may very well go into a coma.’

            Steve’s legs buckled, but Tony was there. Tony held him up.

            ‘Where is she?’ Tony asked, and when the paramedic told him, he commanded, ‘I want her to be seen by Dr Pym – I’ll pay his consulting fee, just charge it to _Stark Medical_. This is the number for my CEO – she’ll authorise it, just tell her it’s for Peggy.’

            Steve ignored them both and pushed into the apartment, immediately spotting Peter curled up on the sofa, stiffly allowing himself to be gentled by Dr Erskine. Peter looked at him, still for a moment, and then made a strangled sort of cry and threw himself across the room and into Steve’s arms.

            He began to cry, and suddenly it didn’t seem so hard to pretend to be strong. Love, overwhelming and complete, washed over him and he knew that he would be what Peter needed. He would find a way to be what he needed.

            ‘You did so well, kid. You did the right thing.’

            ‘Is she going to be ok?’

            Steve squeezed his eyes shut and held Peter close. ‘I don’t know, Peter. I hope so, but if she isn’t… you know you’re never going to be alone. You’re our brother, and we’ll take care of you. You don’t have to be scared.’

            ‘Steve,’ Peter sounded on the edge of tears. ‘I don’t want her to go. I know she’s old. Aunt Mae was old, and she died. But… I don’t want her to go.’

            ‘I know. I know, kid. I don’t want her to go, either.’

            Tony’s hand was at Steve’s waist, and Steve had never been so relieved to have another person close. ‘Steve? I’ve been in touch with Tasha and the guys. They’re going to meet us at the hospital.’

            Peter drew away enough to look at Tony. ‘You’re a genius, Tony. Are you going to make her better?’

            Pete was too old to think things like that, but Steve knew too well how grief and terror could make even grown men into children.

            Tony ducked down and – without hesitation – pulled Peter into a tight hug. ‘I’m doing all I can, Petey, but sometimes people have to go. Your mom loves you more than anything, and you did right by her tonight. Whatever happens, you did exactly the right thing. You’re a hero.’

            Peter’s small fists clutching the fabric at Tony’s back did something to Steve’s heart he couldn’t name. Tony picked him up, held him as if he didn’t weigh anything, and with Steve’s hand on his shoulder they moved as one down the stairs, into the car, to follow the now long-gone ambulance.

            Tony made the burden lighter, and in the car, Steve didn’t have to desperately wonder what the right thing to do was. Not anymore.

            He held his boys as if he could do a damned thing to protect them and said nothing, because there were no words to make this better. The drive to the hospital was tense and quiet, and he threaded his fingers with Tony’s.

            He’d lost his mind and told Tony he loved him only hours ago, and it had been the stupidest, best thing he’d ever done.

            Doing this without him would be impossible.

            Tony met his gaze over the top of Peter’s head, and there was so much courage there. Steve knew what the papers said about him, what people said about him, but they didn’t know him. They didn’t see how brave he was.

            They couldn’t see that by telling him that he loved him, Steve had drawn a line in the sand. Tony had known exactly what was on the other side of that line: a damaged soldier with PTSD and a huge, insane family. A man who wouldn’t accept less than everything Tony had to offer, and who loved utterly and too quickly, with honest faith.

            He’d been so brave, stepping across that line, letting Steve take him, and he was brave now. He didn’t need words to know what Tony’s eyes were saying.

            _I will not leave you. Never. You need to know that. This is huge and frightening and I will not leave you to suffer it alone._

            It was something Steve had spent his life wanting desperately to hear. Children who grow up in foster care never really lose the part of themselves that is still small and confused, unsure of why they are alone and unloved. That loneliness made Steve cling tighter, love harder, and when he looked into Tony’s eyes… he recognised the loneliness he saw there.

            He and Tony couldn’t be more different, but they were alike in the ways that mattered. They recognised each other.

            The hospital was busy and too warm, and he took Peter from Tony, holding the kid as they were guided through to a waiting room.

            The doctor – a friend of Tony’s and a supporter of his medical research – told them in a quiet, even voice, ‘she’s in surgery. We’re preforming a craniotomy – it was a haemorragic stroke, and at her age… we’re going to try our best, but you need to prepare yourself for the worst. Your brother did the right thing calling the ambulance, but with things like this, you can never tell.’

            Steve nodded, throat dry, and dimly heard Tony say, ‘thank you, Hank. Please keep us updated.’

            Through the night, Carters kept arriving. Thor and Jane took Peter back to her apartment, to get some sleep, but Clint, Loki, Tasha and Bruce all stayed, all ashen pale and twitchy.

            Clint seemed determined to feed everyone, though no one wanted to eat. He brought coffee, though, and Steve drank it though his throat felt too dry to swallow. At some point in the night, they started to tell stories.

            ‘I thought she’d kick me out when I asked about Tasha. I thought it was pushing her too far, to ask her to take in another kid, but I’d made a promise.’ Clint’s voice was raw and tired. ‘I promised Tasha I’d never leave her, and I told Peggy, even though I thought it would mean losing the best home I’d ever had. But… but she loved Tasha just as much as I did. She made you smile, Tash. Before that, I was the only one who ever made you smile.’

            ‘You introduced me to my mother,’ Tasha said. She sounded distant, numb. ‘When she held me, I thought… I thought this was what other children got to feel. Safe, and loved. I’ve never been so scared or so happy.’

            Steve instinctively bowed his head to rub his lips against the skin of Tony’s shoulder. They were sitting so close they were almost in each other’s laps, and to their eternal credit, none of his siblings had said a word. They seemed to just accept, in the way only Carter kids could, that Tony was one of them for good now, that he was Steve’s.

            ‘She was the first person to realise I was a criminal because I was bored,’ Bruce said, suddenly. ‘She looked me dead in the eye and said, “you can keep it up, Bruce, or you can be someone extraordinary and prove everyone who ever called you stupid is a fuckwit of the highest calibre.”’

            Tony chuckled, mostly on reflex. It was dry sound. ‘She said that?’

            ‘Yeah. When I got sick, she was sitting with me through the first round of chemo and I started crying. It was… overwhelming. I couldn’t believe I’d fought so hard for my life only to have it taken, and I told her that. She said…’ Bruce’s voice broke, and, surprisingly, Loki put his arm around him. ‘She said, “exactly. You know how to fight. You’ve been doing it your whole life. This parasite invading you isn’t going to know what hit it.”’

            Loki said, ‘you always had that glint in your eye when you were being treated. Even when you were most ill, you always looked so… angry.’

            ‘I was at war with myself,’ Bruce said. ‘I won. I won, because of Peggy.’

            ‘The day she adopted me was the day I realised I could be whatever I wanted. I have the whole world, if I was willing to work for it. Because she looked at me as if I could do anything. As if I could do nothing, and she’d still love and be proud of me,’ Loki whispered, so loud in the echoing waiting room.

            ‘What will happen if she doesn’t wake up?’ Tasha asked suddenly.

            They were quiet for a long time, and then Steve said, ‘I’m going to live with her. I’ll take care of her, and I’ll get a job, and I’ll study. I’m going to be an art teacher.’

            ‘Steve,’ Tasha said, almost angry, ‘what if she doesn’t come home?’

            ‘Then I guess I become a parent!’ Steve barked.

            The silence was thick. Tony straightened, but Steve couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look, and see that this was too much. That they could make vague plans to live together, some time in the future when everything was better, but that this was one step too far.

            ‘None of you could do it,’ he finished, softly. ‘I know you’d all try, but you’ve got lives, you couldn’t give Peter what he needs. And I want to do it. I want him. I’m the closest thing he’s got to a father.’

            Clint’s agreement, when it came, felt like a blessing. It was Clint who still lived with Peggy and Peter, Clint who’d been with Peter ever since he came home with Peggy. Compared to him, Steve was just a distant visiting uncle – he’d been at war for all the important parts of Peter’s childhood.

            ‘He looks up to you. And… I couldn’t. I love Peter more than anything, but I’m in love with Phil, and he’s not ready for this. I couldn’t ask him to do it.’

            Steve was asking Tony. Screw that, Steve was telling Tony. There were soulmates and the one person you found yourself loving more than you’d ever known you could… and then there was a kid who needed you.

            If Tony couldn’t do it, Steve would have to leave. He would destroy himself doing it, but even a parent broken beyond repair was better than no parent at all.

            ‘You know I love him too, don’t you?’ Tony sounded desperate, needing Steve to understand. ‘I want to be together, Steve. I won’t leave you alone in this. I made a promise. And come on, it’s Pete. If I get the chance to be a bigger part of his life… it’d be good. It’d be great. I’d find a way to be what he needs.’

            Steve turned to him, and saw that stupid, utter honesty there. That bravery.

            He fell in love a little more, and didn’t hear Loki’s halfhearted whine of, ‘god, Steve, people here are already sick,’ when he dragged Tony closer and kissed him.

            It probably wouldn’t be alright. It was going to be hard as hell, but… Tony was here, and he’d said he would stay.

            It would be enough.


	10. The Sketchbook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babysitting and at long last, a look into the sketchbook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has taken a little longer; I'm actually in the middle of pre-publishing edits for my first book, believe it or not... I'm so grateful to all of you for your lovely comments and for being so adorable. I'm also sorry I seem to keep making you all cry...

In retrospect, Tony realised that at no point had this been a good idea.

            Sure, he’d been alone with Peter before, but there had always been some kind of safety net, in the form of Peggy in the next room or Clint singing in the shower. Some other responsible adult who could step in should Tony somehow cripple or maim the child.

            When he’d finally managed to persuade Steve to leave the hospital, early in the morning, Steve had been so ashen faced and had held on so tightly to Tony’s hand.

            He’d taken Steve back to his own apartment, knowing Peggy’s would be too painful, and he’d given him tea and gentle touches, had persuaded him into a hot bath and… and that had been amazing. His huge bathtub had really come into its own, with its TV in the wall, and when Steve had asked him to stay with him it had been the easiest thing in the world to just lay there in Steve’s arms and watch two episodes of _Buffy_ , just adding more and more hot water when Steve started to shiver.

            Steve had seemed somehow very young, and that was something Tony recognised. He remembered how, in college, he’d gotten the phone call to say his parents had died. For days, Rhodey had acted like a parent – persuading Tony to eat, to sleep, to wash. It was easy, so easy, to take care of Steve.

            He’d wrapped him in sweats and a bathrobe so fluffy it looked like an unethically slaughtered muppet and had tucked him into bed, settling next to him with his tablet to do some work.

            It was the pattern, for two days. They’d sleep in late – it was somehow universally and silently agreed that Thor, whose classes started late, would visit Peggy in the mornings – and then they’d spend most of the morning and some of the afternoon in the waiting room. Steve would draw, sometimes, or read the paperbacks Tony bought for him in the hospital shop. Tony worked, answered phonecalls, and held his hand.

            Then they’d come home, and they’d make love as if they were trying to prove to each other they were still alive.

            But today everyone’s lives were in the way, and Tony had managed to persuade Steve to join Thor at the university library, to start putting together his portfolio for college applications.

            Which apparently meant, in the eyes of all the Carters, that Tony was on babysitting duty.

            And that was great. Really, it was. When they’d been in the hospital, barely eight hours into being… well, lovers seemed a weird word, but it was the only one that fit, and Steve had looked at him with those impossible eyes and asked him to stand with him, it had been the easiest decision. Sure, it was huge and terrifying, but Tony was getting better at huge and terrifying, and it was Peter.

            Tony loved Peter. Every second spent with the kid was mind-blowing, eye-opening – every second healed him a little, because the more time he spent astonished and overwhelmed by Peter the more he realised that the way Howard Stark had treated him had never been Tony’s fault.

            He knew that by ignoring Tony as a kid, Howard had missed something precious and extraordinary, and if he got the chance to watch Peter grow up – more than that, be an actual part of the kid’s life – he would make the best of it.

            He didn’t know how to be a dad, but Steve did. Steve would make the best dad, and he would be a safety net.

            Except that today Steve was busy, and Tony had been left alone with a hyperactive genius IQ child and nothing to entertain him but…

            Well. Mostly things that go _boom_.

            ‘Tony?’ Peter looked up at him. ‘What are we going to do?’

            Tony rubbed a grease-stained hand across his forehead and contemplated the scene in front of them. The flames really were getting higher.

            ‘Well, kid, what three things does a fire need?’

            Peter considered it. ‘Fuel, oxygen and an ignition source.’

            ‘Right. So you made fun of me when I told you to put the stupid thing into the testing compartment, but when you so kindly provided that fire with its goddamned ignition source, it suddenly doesn’t look like such a bad idea.’

            ‘So… we just wait for it to run out of fuel or oxygen?’

            ‘Yup. That’s a sealed compartment. It shouldn’t be too long. I know there’s a button here, somewhere, that sucks the oxygen out of the compartment, but damned if I can remember which one it is.’

            ‘You curse a lot.’

            ‘Well, when a ten year old modifies and blows up one of _your_ multi-million dollar robots, you can curse too.’

            ‘Are you mad?’

            Tony smiled and ruffled the kid’s hair. ‘Honestly? Apart from the whole explosion of fiery death thing, I think that was some pretty awesome work. You don’t make omlettes without breaking eggs, Pete.’

            ‘So… you’re not mad?’

            ‘Nope. A little proud, I think.’ He thought about it, then patted Peter’s shoulder and let his arm stay there as they watched the inferno blaze. ‘Let’s not tell Stevie, ‘kay?’

            ‘Sure thing, Tony.’

            ‘How are you liking staying with Thor and Jane?’

            Peter shrugged, then snuggled closer to Tony’s side. Tony’s breath left him all in a rush as he felt Peter’s fists close around his shirt.

            ‘I like them a lot, but Jane’s not really great with kids, and Thor’s kind of like a big kid himself. I wish I could stay here with you and Steve.’

            ‘We’re trying to do what’s best, Pete. I know it’s hard to accept, especially ‘cause you’re so smart, but you’ve got to try and trust that we’re doing what’s best for you.’

            ‘I read that thing Darcy was making into a poster,’ Peter said into Tony’s side, slightly muffled. ‘You came back from the dead. And Steve, he’s a super-soldier. You guys won’t die.’

            ‘Hey. Hey, kid, what kind of talk is that?’ Tony ducked down, so he was eye-level with Peter, and took his shoulders, gently encouraged him to look at him. ‘What’s the matter?’

            ‘Everyone dies. My birth mom and dad, and my Aunt Mae, and Peggy.’

            ‘She’s not dead. She’s a tough old bird, your Peggy.’

            Peter began to cry, and Tony’s heart couldn’t take much more of this – people he loved crying. It _hurt_.

‘She’s old. Even if she doesn’t die, she’ll have another stroke, or she’ll get sick – I heard her talking when she took me in. She only did it because she loves me. She knew she was too old to have another kid.’

To hell with it. Tony wrapped his arms around the kid and hugged him tight, held onto his soft little head and rocked him back and forth, the way his nannies had when he was a child.

He sighed, and patted Peter’s back. ‘I know how scared you must be right now.’

‘You and Steve, you could look after me. I know you love him lots, and he loves me. He’d be my dad. Is it… is it you? Do you not like me? I didn’t mean to blow up that robot.’

Tony pulled away enough to look into Peter’s eyes, and realised without much surprise that things really weren’t that scary. Not when you had a kid looking at you and needing you to be brave.

‘If it comes to it, if Peggy can’t take care of you, that’s what we want to do. You know I love you, right, Pete? You’re the brightest, sweetest kid in the world. You don’t deserve any of the crap that’s happened to you. I’d be so lucky to be…’

‘One of my dads?’

            Tony blinked at him. ‘You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?’

            ‘You’re my family.’ Peter tucked his head under Tony’s chin and wiped his soggy face on Tony’s shirt. ‘You make Steve really happy.’

            ‘He’s not been happy, these past couple days.’

            ‘Yes, he has. That’s why he feels so guilty. He thinks he shouldn’t be so happy, when Peggy’s sick, but he doesn’t get it.’ Peter gave him a shaky, perfect smile, and Tony’s chest ached, it was so full. ‘She’s our mom. She’s always done everything to make us happy. If she knew he was being guilty, she’d flick his ear.’

            ‘She used to do that to me, when I was a kid. She still does it, sometimes, when we’re working on her cars together. Though I kind of think she’s been avoiding the workshop to give me and Steve more time together.’

            ‘Peggy asked Pepper if she thought you’d like to wear Granddad Carter’s pocket watch, if you ever married Stevie.’

            Tony opened his mouth, then closed it again, then opened it and managed, ‘what did Pep say to that?’

            ‘She said, “I think if you or Steven asked him to, Tony would run around Central Park dressed as a mongoose.” Tony, what’s a mongoose?’

            ‘Like a big old desert weasel. She said that?’

            ‘Yup.’ Peter seemed to have forgotten his tears, which was a massive relief to say the least. Tony stood up and guided him over to the workbench, where they’d been toying with the designs for a new kind of phone. ‘Desert weasel? Really?’

            ‘They eat snakes. They’re pretty cool – I’ll find you a copy of Rikitikitavi, I loved that when I was a kid. You Carters really move fast, don’t you? I haven’t even known Steve for a month.’

            ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Peter said peacefully, quickly and competently dragging from the computer several three-dimensional diagrams and beginning to play with them. ‘Our family shouldn’t work. It’s not the way other people’s families work. But we do, and we know a new member of our family when we see one. It’s our superpower.’

            Tony didn’t know if he’d ever stop being astounded by Peter. He was a lot like Steve, in his easy friendliness, his eagerness to love despite everything he’d been put through, and his loyalty. But Tony could see all the pieces of Peter’s other family in him, Tasha and Bruce and everyone, and wondered if that’s why they all fit together. They were kindred souls.

            The fact that Peter was so quick to love, after everything… it made Tony courageous.

            He would learn to find ways to entertain the kid that were less likely to burst into flames.

            Or alternatively, he would find some tiny safety gear. _That_ would be cute. When Tony was a kid, he’d had to make do without, or wearing adult-sized stuff. He had a lot of scars.

            The idea of Peter getting scars was awful and made him feel a little queasy and overprotective.

            They worked together, and it was a strange experience, because although it was really easy to hang out with Peter, Tony was constantly on high alert, constantly aware of how dangerous the room was, how much Peter could get hurt.

            It was intense, and it was weird. He suddenly understood why Steve had remembered the fact that the day they’d met he’d been doing sock slides.

            He would never, ever allow Peter to do sock slides in the workshop! It was a ridiculous, irresponsible thing to do and the fact that Tony did it on a regular basis only served to prove he needed constant adult supervision.

            Except he was the adult supervision, now, and it involved him changing his whole way of thinking, every instinct and a good portion of his brain now devoted to making sure he didn’t maim Steve’s kid brother.

            He showed Peter how to work the design software he’d put together that let them design in three dimensions, and together they started jokingly designing a metal war suit with guns in the wrist and jetboots.

            By midday, Peter prodded him gently in the ribs and reminded him that children need to eat, and they discovered that at some point, Steve had shopped.

            It made Tony feel strange, staring at a full fridge and knowing that Steve had filled it because he thought Tony didn’t eat properly.

            It was nice, having someone care for him enough to keep him fed. And Tony had thought he was the one taking care of Steve… maybe they were looking after each other.

            The one thing he was capable of cooking without disaster was grilled cheese, and even then one of them came out a little charred. He gave the non-burnt one to Peter, along with one of Steve’s pansy little yogurts and a pickle that Peter politely demanded and smoked like a cigar.

            Tony chuckled at the weirdness of the kid as he munched his own sandwich and tried to get the magic coffee machine to give him its glorious black ambrosia. Steve had, the day before, switched it for decaf after having Tony vibrate beside him for half an hour when they’d gone to bed. The problem of excessive energy had been solved with the exchange of mind-rocking orgasms, but the sneakiness and betrayal of decaf made Tony suspicious of the magic coffee machine.

            The fact that Steve was allowed to touch the coffee machine and had survived was a testament to how much Tony liked the man.

            ‘Tony?’

            ‘Yeah, Pete?’

            ‘You love him, don’t you?’

            Tony turned around and spoke through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Stebe?’

            ‘Duh.’

            He swallowed and sat down next to Peter with his mug of – thanks be to the dark gods – caffeinated coffee. ‘More than I ever thought I could love anyone. He’s… he makes me want to be better, to deserve him.’

            ‘Good. That’s good.’ Peter ate, and Tony watched him, pleased that Peter hadn’t lost his appetite with grief. ‘You look happier, too. I think Steve suits you.’

            Tony agreed. ‘You’re too smart for your own good, aren’t you?’

            Peter smiled. ‘That’s why you and me are friends. We know what it’s like to be too smart.’

            There was a jingling noise, and some ancient primordial instinct had Tony on his feet and putting his body between Peter and the unknown intruder.

            Which seemed particularly ludicrous when into the kitchen walked Steve and Thor.

            Steve looked exhausted, but when he met Tony’s gaze he smiled that special, goofy little smile and in a heartbeat Tony was across the room and wrapped around the Captain like a boa.

            Steve managed to disentangle himself enough to grab Tony’s chin and steal a kiss, and it was warm and soft and tasted like home.

            ‘GOOD AFTERNOON, ANTHONY. IS IT YOUR INTENTION TO EAT THE REST OF THAT SANDWICH?’

            ‘Indoor voices, Thor,’ Tony said, unable to stop looking into his stupid boyfriend’s stupid eyes with their joy and their crinkly corners. ‘Sure, eat the damned sandwich.’

            He reached up and tangled his fingers in Steve’s too-neat hair, then stood on tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, desperate to erase the strain and exhaustion from his soldier’s face.

            ‘I missed you,’ he said, soft enough so it was only for Steve.

            ‘You’re such a fluffy kitten,’ Steve said, but it was said in that way only Steve had, as if there were a happy laugh hidden somewhere in the cavern of his tongue.

            Tony kissed him, hard and deep, and tried to find the laugh with a questing tongue.

            ‘Ew, Tony, stop trying to steal my big brother’s tonsils,’ Peter cried from across the room. ‘Grownups are gross, huh, Thor?’

            Tony looked over his shoulder to find Thor nodding peacefully. ‘AY, YOUNG PETER, THEY ARE INDEED. MAY I HAVE A PICKLE?’

            ‘How was he?’ Steve asked, his thumb smoothing the hair at the base of Tony’s neck. That always seemed to be their pattern; Tony messed up Steve’s hair, and Steve smoothed Tony’s. ‘I know he can be hard to handle, sometimes. He’s a lot like you in that respect.’

            ‘We were great. He’s so… he’s so great, Steve.’

            He glanced up and saw that Steve was beaming at him like he’d said something brilliant.

            ‘I know he is. He’s a lot like you in that, too.’

            ‘How was the library?’

            Steve buried his head in Tony’s neck and breathed in, deep. Tony loved it when he did that – he did it, too, and it was so comforting to know he wasn’t alone in finding that specific boyfriend-smell really, really good.

            ‘Exhausting, and hard, but I think I’m ready. I wrote all my essays, and all the sketching and things I did in the past couple of weeks really add to the stuff I did during active duty.’

            ‘It’s a good story, babe. They’re going to eat it up.’

            Steve smiled. Tony could feel teeth against his throat and reminded himself that there was a kid in the room and it was therefore inappropriate to get a raging boner for said kid’s hot older brother. ‘I wanted to show you my sketchbook. Thor’s going to look after Pete for a little while – would you come with me?’

            Tony kissed the shell of Steve’s ear and savoured the shiver that ran through Steve’s muscles.

            He was such a big, strong guy, but tiny things like that – like breath and kisses – made him weak, and Tony felt so powerful and so protective whenever he felt it.

             ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

            Steve looked up and smiled shyly. ‘Our room?’

            _Ours._ What the hell was Tony supposed to say to that?

            On their way past the kitchen island, Tony ruffled Peter’s hair and Steve petted his shoulder, fell a little behind as he paused to ask Peter how their morning had been.

            ‘What’s that black stuff on your ears, Peter?’

            ‘Steve,’ Tony cried, in a desperate attempt to distract the guy, ‘I’m ready for my close-up!’

            Steve caught up with him in the corridor and slid an easy hand around Tony’s hip, his fingertips touching the place where Tony’s work vest didn’t quite meet his jeans.

            ‘I know you let him explode things, Tony. I’m not a moron.’

            ‘It was safe! Well, maybe not that safe. I’m going to design tiny, tiny safety gear for him, so we can work together.’

            Suddenly, Steve spun him and pressed him against the wall, fitting his bigger frame against Tony’s with familiar ease.

            It was like they’d been doing this forever. It was like no one had ever worked out how to do this before the two of them; it felt shiny and new.

            Steve caged him with a hand on Tony’s hip and another at his jaw, his thumb following the line of Tony’s beard.

            His eyes were dark and full, and Tony wondered how it was he ever got any work done, when there was someone in the world who looked at him like that.

            He was addicted, and he thought Steve understood that. He was addicted to mattering to someone the way he mattered to Steve, to the way Steve touched him like he was unique and fragile. To the way Steve touched him so it hurt, just a little.

            He was addicted to those eyes, looking at him and all their ice melted and gone. Knowing he was responsible for that new warmth.

            Steve kissed him, licking into his mouth, stealing sweet, hot kisses. Tony caught Steve’s lip between his teeth and in retaliation Steve broke away and sucked a bruise into Tony’s neck, making him gasp.

            He loved that Steve met him, blow for blow.

            ‘I love that you want to include him in your work. I love that you don’t coddle him, that you make him feel clever and grownup, but you’re always aware of him being safe. I love that you’re making plans to work with him again, though I know you can’t have gotten any real work done today. I love you.’

            Tony wrapped his arms around Steve and tried to keep that wicked mouth moving symbols and sigils on his throat.

            ‘He’s a gift,’ he managed, his brain short-circuiting. ‘It’s a gift to be someone he trusts and wants to spend time with. I’d be an idiot to ignore that.’

            Steve hummed. ‘Your father was an idiot. He should’ve deserved you more, Tony. You’re who you are in spite of him, not because of him.’

            Tony stiffened, even as the words filtered into his brain, began to heal something he’d almost forgotten was broken. Steve was the best person he knew – if he thought that Howard Stark was a cruel, callous person and not a paragon of all-American enterprise, then maybe he was right.

            ‘What do you know about my father?’

            ‘What I’ve read, and what Pepper and Peggy have told me. But more than that, I can see it in you.’ Steve kissed his cheek, then his nose. ‘Sometimes people who look at my family forget where we all came from. I can see all the marks he left on you, same as I can see marks on Natasha and Bruce and Loki. It’s just scar tissue. It’ll always be there, but it doesn’t hurt any more. It doesn’t change who you are – it’s just a tiny part of it.’

            Tony pressed his face to his favourite place; the soft skin at the centre of Steve’s chest, where he could feel skin and blood and breath.

            ‘I’m so grateful for you,’ he told that place, and felt Steve sigh out a breath he’d been holding, waiting for Tony to overreact or maybe – just maybe – leave.

            He couldn’t stand the fact that despite Steve’s bravery, he seemed always afraid that these words, this action, would be the final straw. He seemed to be always waiting to push Tony too far.

            Tony would have to put a lot of time and effort into proving that short of physically locking him up, there was nothing that could keep him away from Steve. Not now, not ever. He would always find a way to fight for this strange, perfect, healing thing between them.

            He’d read comic books as a kid, where there’d been hundreds of universes. Each decision along the way of a life made new universes, split them in two, until there were hundreds and thousands, all with different versions of the same people.

            There could be a million universes, and a million versions of the two of them, but he knew somewhere beyond instinct or understanding that in every one of them, he would find Steve.

            Some things were just meant. Some things aren’t that complicated, no matter how hard fate tries to make them so. Tony would love Steve, no matter what. He’d love him heartbroken, grieving, studying, with a kid in tow or as a warrior. He’d take whatever he could get.

            Someday he’d have to find a way to explain that to Steve. He hoped – he knew – Steve would understand, if only he could find the right words, or the right action.

            He kissed the place where Steve’s heart beat and thought that was a pretty good start.

            ‘Come on,’ Steve said, his voice strange, ‘I’ve still got something to show you.’

            Tony settled cross-legged on the bed and watched Steve sling off his duffelbag, then reach in and pull out the sketchbook he’d always been working on in Tony’s workshop.

            Steve climbed up beside him and leant back against the headboard, gestured for Tony to cuddle up against him.

            Tony felt him swallow, then clear his voice and start something that sounded recited.

            ‘My old sketchbooks, the ones from the army and before, they’re all by different versions of me. They’re worth something, and I’m glad I’ve got them, but this one… this one is the kind of art I want to make. It’s the best I’ve ever done, and it’s all after I landed back in New York a month ago.’

            Tony reached out and paused with his hand pale against the dark leather of the book. He felt Steve’s nod and opened it onto the first page.

            It was Erskine, beaming and turning his face to a ray of sunlight. Steve turned the page, and it was Peggy, her face younger than Tony had ever seen it, looking down, her eyes vivid dark and loving.

            Then a page that was just hands, strong and dextrous, familiar. In the bottom corner, the beginnings of a set of eyes, angry and confrontational.

            With a start, Tony realised what he was seeing.

            They were fragments of him. His hands, his eyes. He looked up at Steve, who was blushing and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

            ‘When?’ he asked.

            ‘The night you came to dinner,’ Steve said softly. ‘I couldn’t… you wouldn’t get out of my head. I could remember you in such detail. I’ve never been able to draw someone from memory like that.’

            Tony turned the page, and it was bigger fragments of him. It was as if Steve were unable, yet, to see him as a whole. There were studies of Tony’s shoulders, his face, abstract but the reflection on his welding goggles vividly rendered and obviously showing Steve’s face in both lenses. His arm, wielding a hammer, his hands holding one of his toaster projects.

            Then the first one in colour, all on a page of its own. It was Tony, clearly and carefully drawn with so much detail it was almost a photograph, holding tight to a blurred person shape, so ethereal it was like he was clinging to smoke.

            He was wearing a red scarf, and the skyline behind them both was bright lights and ink, New York lit up like a night sky, as the sun set behind them.

            ‘I couldn’t draw myself,’ Steve said. ‘I tried. I don’t think… I wasn’t there, yet. You were still trying to find me.’

            Tony turned the page, and it was Dugan and his mother, both of them smiling identical smiles at someone off the edge of the paper.

            Again, and it was a collage, bits of magazine and fabric and metal all making up a shape – a man in a metal suit, designed like a graphic novel, the fragments of other stories making his uniform sparkle and glow. Tony was so entranced by the play of light, by the design of the robot, that it was a long minute before he realised it wasn’t a robot. It was him, dressed as one, and he was grinning out of the page.

            There was writing, in Steve’s spidery scrawl, at the edge. _Iron Man_ , said one, and another, _that’s amazing. That’s so amazing._

            Then pages and pages just of studies of Tony. His face, from so many angles and with so many different pens and pencils and even one that seemed to have been painted with watercolours.

            A picture of Bruce that took up a whole page, where he was dead centre, staring directly at the artist. His head was bald, his skin sallow and pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

            Those eyes were… they were impossible. They stood out of the painting and Tony couldn’t look away from them.

            They were so angry. He’d never known Bruce to look as weak as the man in the painting, but for all that he was thin and physically frail, there was nothing but strength and fury in those eyes. He looked as if he were fighting a war with himself, as if inside that body was the greatest battle that could ever be fought.

            And the next page, another painting, similar but so different it could barely be the same man.

            Bruce was in the same position, in the very centre of the page, but he was healthy, heavier and his hair grown back curling black-and-white. His skin was warmer, and he was not staring out of the frame. Instead, he was turned to look to his right, and he was animated, saying something and his eyes and mouth curved in a smile.

            ‘That day we had lunch with him and he gave me his hair,’ Steve explained. ‘He’s talking to you, Tony. You kept making him laugh and it just made me… it made me love you so much more than I did already.’

            Tony looked up at him, but kept his hand on the book. It was already the most precious thing he’d ever held, and he didn’t want to stop touching it.

            ‘When did you start?’ he asked.

            Steve smiled and ducked his head, kissed Tony’s temple.

            ‘That very first day, when you found me having a panic attack and talked me down. You took me to the café, and you were so honest and I got to really see you… I couldn’t help it. It’s all your fault.’

            Tony snorted, but snuggled back into the warmth of Steve’s chest. ‘Figures you’d be an Alanis Morissette fan.’

            ‘I’ve seen your _Jagged Little Pill_ poster in the workshop, Tony, don’t play cool with me.’

            ‘I plead the fifth.’ Tony turned the page again and stopped dead. ‘Steve.’

            ‘I can take it out. If you hate it, it can just go.’

            ‘I don’t hate it.’

            It was an insert to the book, and probably was out-of-sequence chronologically. Tony could see why it had been done separately and then added; the page was completely covered in paint, and that probably would’ve stained the other pages of the book.

            It was Tony, asleep and sprawled across his bed.

            His face was barely in focus, colored a strange, lumiescent blue from the light that was leaking out of the scars on his chest. He was frowning, one hand above his head, palm outstretched as if he were trying to ward something off.

            His scars. They seemed so beautiful – they were glowing vivid blue lines in a precise spiderweb across his chest, and their light was dyeing his entire body. They glowed bright, and the dips of his ribs and navel, of his hips, were in dark blue shadow cast by scar-light.

            They seemed powerful, somehow. As if they were protecting him. As if they were keeping him alive. They didn’t seem so much like a mark on his body as they did a sign that he’d survived, tattoos to mark his continued existence against all odds.

            They looked precious.

            He didn’t realise he’d said it out loud until Steve murmured, ‘they are, to me. Without them, I would never have found you.’

            Tony’s fingers hovered over the page.

            ‘I wanted to show you,’ Steve continued. ‘I wanted you to know how deeply you’re under my skin. I know that you get insecure, sometimes, and I know that everything going on in my life is scary for you, and you’re doing really well, so I wanted you to have something as thanks.’

            ‘This is thanks?’ Tony whispered.

            ‘This is my heart, outside my chest,’ Steve said. ‘This is how I see you. I think… I think it’s beautiful. Loving you is the best, brightest part of me. It takes away all the war and loneliness.’

            ‘I can’t imagine you being lonely. Your family are incredible – I love them so much I barely understand how they’ve all managed to stuff themselves into my life so quickly.’

            ‘I’m the leader, the oldest. I’m strong for them, because they need me to be, and I love being what they need. But with you, I can just be… me. You’ve seen the worst, and you’re still here.’ Gently, so gently, Steve bit his shoulder, then spoke to the mark he’d made. ‘It was lonely without this thing between us. I know you feel that too, sweetheart.’

            Tony’s stomach tightened at the pet name, and when he turned to straddle Steve, to kiss him back into the headboard, he tried to fit all the words that wouldn’t come into one kiss. Into teeth and tongue and breath, he tried to write thousands of words of honesty, and from the way Steve sighed into him and held him tighter, he knew he was understood.

            How had it taken him this long to learn how to do this? To just open himself up, and offer himself, fearful and brave. It was like oxygen, this love, and he could barely remember a time he didn’t have it beating like a living thing in his ribs.

            He’d been a wild child, lonely, angry and sad. He’d been a grieving teenager, drunk, stupid and reckless. He’d been the cowardly playboy billionaire, making things he didn’t understand and letting people die.

            He’d been an unknowing hero, and a sober man, and a better man.

            And he thought maybe he’d had to become that last form of himself to deserve Steve. None of his younger selves could’ve let Steve in as he did. They would’ve fucked him, would’ve been obsessed with him, but they wouldn’t have been able to hold him through a panic attack or be a part of his family. They would’ve run a mile at the thought of raising Peter, at the words of love, at the total honesty Steve demanded.

            He ground down and Steve gasped, so he swallowed it down. He loved how they went from laughing to moaning, how much each time they came together in this bed – or in the shower, the corridor, the blessed kitchen – it was always so damned _happy_.

            ‘I wish I could keep you safe,’ he said against Steve’s lips. ‘I wish I could keep you from being hurt.’

            ‘I don’t need a hero,’ Steve said, his hand moving to stroke the length of Tony through his sweats. ‘Just you.’

            The phonecall would come in to Steve’s phone ten minutes later, and neither of them would hear the ringer going because… well, because Tony was repeating a refrain of _yespleasemoreGod,Stevelovelovefaster_ and Steve was kissing him silent, fucking up into him and letting him ride them both into oblivion.

            Thor picked up the call that went to voicemail on Steve’s phone, and he was wise enough to wait another half hour before telling them that Peggy had woken up, that she wasn’t out of the woods but that it was looking better.

            And Steve would hold his brothers, relieved beyond words, and meet his lover’s gaze and know that this – today – was a beginning.

            Old wounds become scars, and something new had begun.


	11. An Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologise for how long it took me to finish this - I had my finals! Thank you all so much for your comments and kudos, I love reading them so much and I'm already planning another fic.

_Eight Years Later_

 

            ‘So let me get this straight.’

            Peter sighed. Nothing good ever started with those words, not from his best friend, and he really didn’t need any more drama. Not today.

            He closed down the progamme his system was running – for his college-level physics classes with Dr Reid – and swivelled in his chair to face his friend.

            ‘Your dad is a multi-billionaire, one of the richest men in the whole world, and yet you live in a brownstone in Brooklyn. How is that good sense? If I had his money, I’d have my own island.’

            Wade waved at the walls of Peter’s room to demonstrate his point. Admittedly, it wasn’t a big room, but it had all of Peter’s books, and drawings Steve had done of him as a kid on the walls, and a framed photo of him and Peggy on his bedside table. It sat next to photographs of him as a baby with his birth parents, as a little kid with his aunt, and one taken last year with Steve and Tony.

            Peggy had passed away the year before, leaving Steve the house, and they’d discussed moving, but this was Peter’s home and he’d asked to stay. He’d wanted to keep her close, and he’d been able to see from Steve’s expression that he understood.

            He didn’t tell Wade any of that, because the other teen knew it all. Wade had been there, through all of it, he was just being… well. Wade.

            He was wearing all red, head to toe, including red sneakers, and he was lounging on one elbow on Peter’s bed watching him work. Wade was always coming over – Pete was pretty sure that he preferred Pete’s house to his own – but he perpetually pretended to be confused and alarmed by Peter’s life.

            Wade was rarely confused, and was more alarming than alarmed. He just seemed to enjoy expressing his own internal monologue. A lot of the time he just talked to himself; Peter found it strangely soothing, particularly when Tony was travelling and he missed the genius.

            ‘Firstly, Tony’s not my dad, he’s my brother-in-law, and secondly, you _know_ that we all live here because it was my mom’s house, and because it’s close to Steve’s school. Plus, could you imagine Steve in a mansion? He’d hate it.’

            ‘I just don’t get it. This place is always so full of people! Even your super rich emo brother stays here when he’s visiting from LA, and he always acts like he hates it.’

            ‘That’s just Loki. He pretends to hate everything to seem cool, but he loves staying here. He even loves babysitting, even when he bitches and moans about it.’

            ‘And that’s another thing. How come your brother and sister don’t go to boarding school? I’d kick my kids out as soon as I could. Instead, they’re just here, _all the time_ , screaming and making things sticky.’

            ‘Aaaand… that’s why you’ll never be trusted with a kid, Wade,’ Peter said, unable to hide a smile. Wade was a little like Loki in that he always complained, but also always offered to help Peter babysit. ‘They’re my niece and nephew, dude, not my brother and sister. You know that Tony’s dad sent him to boarding school, and it messed him up. On top of that, you’ve met my family. We all chose each other. You’ve seen Tony and Steve with the babies – they freak out being away from them for a day, let alone a whole semester.’

            ‘They’re not babies, they’re freaking huge.’

            ‘They’re four. You’re just upset they’re not all cute and super portable anymore.’

            Wade made a weird sort of grumbling snort noise and returned to his original argument. ‘So what does he do with all the moneys and cool gadgetty things? This place is barren of awesomeness.’

            Peter hummed and got up from his study chair, began unpacking his schoolbag. ‘Steve’s kind of freaked by technology. And he mostly just gives it all to charity – we really don’t need it for anything. He pretty much runs half the children’s homes in New York.’

            ‘Let me rephrase. Could he be persuaded to donate to my own charitable endeavor? I have a pitch prepared and everything.’

            Peter considered telling Wade that his _wine-coolers-and-guinea-pigs_ fund was not a charity, then realised that his friend would undoubtably spend all windfalls on pancakes for the two of them, and that Tony would probably agree to any plot involving guinea pigs no questions asked.

            It freaked Peter out, occasionally, despite how much he loved his brother, that Tony was allowed to look after small children. He remembered how much fun it had always been to be looked after by Tony – hell, it was still more fun than pretty much any teenage rebellion could offer – but his own overprotectiveness of the babies wasn’t calmed by the fact that he knew Tony would probably fund any explosive project on the spot.

            Hell, Tony had paid for the computers all over Peter’s room, which he could very easily put to use hacking into the world’s banking system.

            Tony knew he could. But he’d also asked him – _pretty please_ – not to, and Peter was a sucker for that.

            ‘I’ve got a present for them, by the way,’ Wade said, interrupting Peter’s thought processes.

            ‘Who?’

            ‘Wanda and Max. Where are they?’

            Peter turned to him, horrified. ‘I swear to all the dark gods of yore, if you try and give them guinea pigs again I will kick you out of this house. It’s supposed to be Steve’s birthday, we cannot traumatise him again. Not after last time. He only just stopped flinching whenever he hears squeaking.’

            Wade had the good grace to look bashful. ‘I said I’m sorry for that, it was a momentary lapse of judgment.’

            ‘Your whole existence is one long lapse of judgment. It’s why “super-spy” is not a legit career choice for you.’

            ‘Screw you, I’d make a superb assassin. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I got them popping candy and soda. I thought it would be fun to take them up on the roof and make super-sticky fireworks. But, like, kid-safe, non-burny fireworks.’

            ‘That… actually sounds like fun. But we’d have to wait for Tony. The last time I blew something up without him he pouted for _days_. It was pathetic.’

            Wade giggled. ‘I remember that. Jeez, can you believe someone actually let that guy adopt the twins? I mean, he’s a super awesome dad, but he does make a pretty weird first impression. And second impression. What maniac met him and went, yeah, that’s a good idea, let’s give that guy these orphaned two-year-olds?’

            Peter ignored that, partly because Wade knew full well that he didn’t appreciate anyone trash talking Tony, and partly because it was a question he’d asked himself a lot over the last two years.

            ‘Steve and Tony took them to the park for the day. Tony was talking about taking them to the Natural History Museum, but you remember what happened the last time they did that.’

            Both Pete and Wade shuddered in unison. It was hard to forget any family outing that had resulted in Steve putting on his terrifying-soldiery-voice and yelling, ‘ _Pietro Maximoff Rogers-Stark, put those bones back where they came from or so help me!’_

            Poor little Max. At least he seemed to have grown out of his ‘destruction of public property’ phase.

            Wanda hadn’t, but everyone had their fingers crossed.

            Wade flopped like a fish out of water, off of the bed and onto the floor.

            ‘Peeeete. I’m bored. When are the crazies getting here? I love the crazies.’

            ‘You’re referring to my brother, Clinton, and his honorable husband?’

            ‘I love Crazy Coulson almost as much as I love Thor and his tight little booty. Last time I saw him, he put me on the naughty stair for five full minutes. I kept trying to get up, and he just kept putting me back. Man, I had an epiphany on that naughty stair. It wriggled my brain.’

            ‘Congratulations, Wade, you’re officially the first fifteen-year-old to ever submit to the indignity of _Super Nanny_ ’s training techniques.’

            ‘That’s what that was? I don’t care, man, I am totally building up gold stars. Every time I help Coulson with the dishes, he gives me another one. He says when I’ve got a hundred he’ll take me to the firing range.’

            Peter blinked. A promise like that, even if he’d never really thought Wade would take it seriously, meant that Phil did actually like Wade.

            Huh. But then, Peter had known Phil for almost ten years, and he’d never been good at sensing the guy’s feelings. Hawk, on the other hand, was like a pathetically open, perfume-soaked book. When he’d first brought Phil home, he’d followed him round the house all night.

            If he hadn’t seen Phil cry like a little girl at their wedding, he might’ve had some questions about the man’s intentions towards his big brother.

            Phil had also cried at Steve and Tony’s wedding, though everyone had cried at that one. Their vows had possibly ruined Peter for life; he’d never be able to settle for anything less than absolute true love.

            Like Jane and Thor, and Bruce and Betty. Two more weddings where the videos were punctuated by the unmistakable, girly sound of Phil sobbing into a tissue.

            ‘How many do you have?’ he asked Wade.

            ’67. When I get 69 I’m assuming there’s some kind of runner’s-up prize.’

            ‘Not everyone gives that number the same importance you do, buddy.’

            ‘Fools,’ Wade said softly and menacingly. ‘Fools, all of them.’

            There was a gentle knock at the door. Three times, then a polite wait.

            ‘Steve, it’s ok, you can come in. It’s just Wade.’

            The door opened, to reveal Steve dressed in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. The t-shirt and the knees of the jeans were grass and mud stained, but Steve seemed completely oblivious, beaming at Peter as if he hadn’t seen him in years.

            He’d seen Peter early in the morning. He’d given him an American flag cupcake – Steve always gave people cake on his own birthday, possibly misunderstanding the whole idea – and had told him he loved him, and that he’d ace his French test.

            The first part was true, the second part less so, but that still floored Peter, even after all this time. The ease with which his family – especially Tony and Steve, who’d technically adopted him a few years back, when Peggy got really sick – loved him.

            As if it wasn’t hard. It just was.

            Steve was the best at it. Everything in Steve’s eyes seemed to be so simple. He loved Peter, and Peter was awesome, and everything would be ok.

            It made Pete love him a little more each time he absent-mindedly showed it, and he couldn’t help but grin at his brother.

            ‘Hi, Wade,’ Steve said cheerfully. ‘It’s a pleasure to have you, but house rules apply.’

            ‘Hi, Mister Rogers-Stark. Happy birthday! And I remember.’ Wade grinned and recited. ‘Nothing illegal, nothing dangerous to the babies unless they’re wearing those dinky safety suits, and no explosions unless Mister Stark-Rogers is supervising and paying attention.’

            Steve’s smile turned soft at the mention of his surname and Tony’s linked. Peter barely suppressed a laugh at the pathetic lovesick expression on his face, even after all these years.

            ‘Thanks, Wade. Though that last one’s mainly to stop Tony pouting. He gets really grumpy when he’s not there for explosions. He doesn’t really count as adult supervision around flammables.’

            ‘Who’s coming over tonight, Steve?’ Peter asked, and closed his homework. It had been ridiculous to try and start it with Wade around.

            Steve hummed, obviously distracted. He had a hickey blooming on his neck and what looked like highlighter along his jaw, and Peter knew Tony had to be responsible for both.

            ‘Everyone, really. I think Loki is actually flying in just for it, though please don’t tease him about that, Peter. You know how much he hates it when he thinks we think he likes us.’ Steve smiled and wondered into the room, where he nudged Wade’s legs out of the way and sat down beside him on the bed. ‘It’s a tradition, ever since I came back from active duty, met Tony, and he threw me a birthday party. It was one of the best nights of my life.’

            ‘It’s a bigger deal than Christmas,’ Peter said cheerfully.

            Wade looked confused. ‘But… last year Tony bought ponies for the twins’ Christmas, despite the fact that they were terrified of them, and he insisted on celebrating Hanukkah too… he even bought _me_ presents, and he hates me.’

            ‘He doesn’t hate you,’ Steve explained, ‘he just doesn’t appreciate anyone competing with him for the title of World’s Greatest Explosion Maker.’

            ‘Tony just likes buying gifts. I don’t think he really understands we’d still like him if he didn’t have any money,’ Peter said.

            ‘Speak for yourself,’ Steve replied, a blissful, goofy smile on his handsome face. ‘I’m just in it for the money.’

            ‘Puh-lease.’ The voice, low, mocking and warm, came from the doorway. ‘You can lie to yourself all you like, sugar, but don’t lie to the kids. They deserve the truth: you’re in it for the booty.’

            Tony’s attempt at purring sexiness was slightly offset by the fact that he had one twin in his arms and the other wrapped around his right leg.

            ‘Pete,’ Wade said, moaning softly, ‘they’re doing it again. The flirting thing. Make them stop…’

            ‘Booty?’ Wanda looked up from where she was clinging to her father’s knee.

            ‘Yes, sweetness. You see, Daddy has an award-winning booty, and it’s why Papa married him.’

            ‘Tony,’ Steve said warningly. Peter grinned; Steve sounded like he was telling Tony off, but that smile said something different. ‘Don’t tell her that. Wanda, _kochanie_ , don’t listen to him. I married Daddy because he’s the love of my life, and because I wanted to be with him always.’

            Wade made a retching noise, but it was half-hearted at best, and Peter thought he saw his friend tear up a little when Tony staggered over, dropped Max into Steve’s lap and kissed the taller man on the tip of his nose.

            Max, well-used to being thrown from person to person, cuddled closer and asked, interested, ‘Cake, Papa?’

            ‘After dinner, Max.’

            ‘I love you too, obviously,’ Tony said. ‘That’s why I got the super big fireworks. To celebrate the lovingness.’

            ‘I swear to all that is good in this world, Tony, if you destroy any more of my mother’s house I’m going to make you sleep on the roof.’

            Wanda suddenly abandoned Tony and ran across the room, where Peter easily grabbed her and dragged her up into his lap.

            ‘Hey there, troublemaker. How was the park?’

            ‘Boring,’ she said, and jiggled around until Peter got the hint and started bouncing her on his knee. ‘I want to help you and Daddy make a motorcycle.’

            The twins had been told that their Papa’s motorcycle had been how their parents had met and fallen in love, and both of them seemed enamored by the idea. Max drew them, everywhere, on wallpaper and his own stomach and often on Steve’s expensive easels.

            Wanda, however, was much more like Tony. Peter often wondered to himself if there was some higher force that had brought his family together, that somehow the twins were so much like their adoptive parents. Wanda seemed to have a natural instinct for numbers and logic puzzles, which was quickly becoming translated into a love of engines that Tony and Peter probably didn’t do enough to stop her from following. She had her own safety gear, and they never let her do anything unsupervised, but it still terrified all of them whenever she was around anything that might go _boom_.

            Sadly, there appeared to be no way to keep Wanda away from the _boom_.

            Peter and Tony were simultaneously horrified and proud beyond reason of her.

            Peter looked up to see that Max had crawled onto Wade’s stomach. Max loved Wade – it was probably because of the horrendously inappropriate gifts.

            It left Tony free of his toddler-burden, and he celebrated by climbing behind the birthday boy and wrapping himself, koala-style, around the larger man.

            Pete had long since gotten used to excessive displays of affection, and it actually made something loosen in his chest to watch how Steve smiled that secret smile and held Tony close.

            It had been a very long road. He’d lost so many people, and there had been so much heartache, but Tony and Steve… they were something permanent and always. Even when they fought, it was always over something stupid like Tony’s inability to put himself to sleep or Wanda’s pyromania. It also always resulted in very loud, very messy sex, and the next day Pete would get a new shiny thing from a guilt-ridden Tony, who seemed convinced that he could erase childhood trauma with presents.

            Pete didn’t want to think where his brother had gotten that idea. It made his stomach feel weird to imagine how lonely Tony must’ve been, growing up.

            ‘Mister Stark-Rogers? I brought a child-safe explosion I’m meant to share with you.’

            Steve groaned, low in his throat, and Tony bit it gently. ‘It’s alright, baby, just relax into it. Explosions can be fun!’

            Wanda cuddled close, mimicking her fathers, just as the doorbell went and Steve groaned again, though this time in a less fun way.

            ‘That’s probably both Mrs Dugans and Dum-Dum,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to start setting up the party. Tony? Are you listening to me?’

            ‘Nope,’ Tony said happily, ‘I’m thoroughly distracted by the warmness of your shoulders. Tell me again how you managed to wind up organizing your own surprise party?’

            ‘We have a party every year on my birthday, sweetheart, and when you’re allowed to organize it nothing happens until the day and then you pay hundreds of people to re-arrange my house.’

            ‘Our house,’ Tony said, pouting a little.

            ‘Yes, our house.’ Steve’s voice went soft again and he turned around, capturing Tony’s mouth in a deep kiss.

            Peter grinned even as Wade and Max let out simultaneous cries of, ‘ _ewwwwww!_ ’

            He grabbed Wanda and gestured to Wade, who scooped Max up. ‘Hey, Steve, we’re going to take the twins up to the roof while you guys set up. Do you want us to let the Dugans in?’

            Tony broke away from the important task of sucking his husband’s tongue to say, ‘yes, let the witches fly, my pretty.’

            Peter smiled again and buried his face in Wanda’s soft dark hair. Dum-Dum, his terrifying mother and his lovely wife Madeline would doubtlessly set themselves the task of getting the house ready; the older Mrs Dugan would have brought half a ton of food.

            He could give Tony and Steve a second to wallow in each other. After all, they’d given him everything; he could give a little back.

            Wanda grabbed his ear and pulled, and he laughed out loud, because despite what he’d told Wade, he knew the truth.

            He lived with his dads and his little brother and sister. And no matter where he went or what life threw at him, he’d always be able to come home.

*

            Tony pushed Steve back on the bed and straddled him, lying down low to press kisses to his jaw and taste the low moan that came from his husband’s strong throat.

            ‘Tony, everyone’s going to be arriving-‘

            ‘Baby, we have a million family members. They’ll sort it. I haven’t seen you all day.’

            Steve snorted and slid his fingers beneath Tony’s shirt, strong, calloused fingers finding bare skin. ‘You haven’t left my side since the twins woke us up at five this morning.’

            ‘I’ve seen Papa. Don’t get me wrong, I love that guy. I love how patient he is, even when our maniac children do something illegal. I love the goofy expression he gets whenever they’re amazing, which is literally every three minutes, and I love the PG13 kisses I get whenever he’s around.’ Tony kissed him and rolled his hips, swallowed the noises Steve made. ‘But I miss my Steve, baby. I miss you.’

            ‘I’m here,’ Steve said gently. ‘You know I’m always here.’

            Tony sighed and laid his head on Steve’s chest, his muscles slowly relaxing. ‘I feel like I haven’t slept since…’

            ‘Since we adopted Pete? I know how you feel.’ Steve’s hand carded through Tony’s hair, and it was just the _best_ feeling. Just enough nails, and the other hand massaged the muscles of Tony’s lower back. Tony melted. ‘I told you it wasn’t going to be easy.’

            ‘You told me it would be worth it. God, you were so right. Every second of it just amazes me, Steve. Even when it’s hard, when Max gave Wanda and Pete chicken pox or when Pete broke his wrist on his skateboard, it’s amazing.’

            ‘I know what you mean, though. Sometimes we’re so wrapped up being their parents, we forget each other. I don’t ever want to take you for granted, Tony.’

            Tony found himself smiling into the skin of Steve’s neck, ridiculously pleased that his husband understood, that he wasn’t alone in the bizarre sense that he missed Steve when he saw him every day.

            He was just so relieved to have Steve’s attention to himself. ‘I wanted to give you a super sexy birthday present, but it’s Peter’s room and there are some boundaries even I won’t cross.’

            ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m too tired to move. And I’ve missed this. Just having you close without worrying Max or Wanda are going to jump on us.’ Steve kissed his forehead and sighed. ‘You astound me, when you’re with them. Do you remember how scared you were, when we realised Peggy was ill and we would have to step up and be there for Peter?’

            ‘I remember. I still feel like that, sometimes. Like I won’t be what they need, that I’m going to do something to damage them. But then I look at you, and I know you’d never let me. We’re partners.’

            ‘Yeah.’ Steve’s voice was so soft and so warm. ‘It was your idea to adopt a baby. You never told me what made you want that, and I never asked – I was too happy, and too scared you’d change your mind. I wanted it so badly, and I should’ve asked you why.’

            ‘I knew,’ Tony said, into Steve’s shoulder, not trusting himself to tell this truth into impossibly earnest blue eyes. ‘I knew you wanted more children. I could tell by the way you looked at Peter, the way you looked at Jess and Carol’s baby when we took care of him. You came to the _Maria Stark Foundation_ gala with me in your dress uniform.’

            ‘I remember.’

            ‘You looked so handsome. Like a wartime hero, like the first birthday party I threw you when I spent the whole night needing to kiss you like I needed air, and you gave me your dogtags. And I was talking to these investors, and I turned around and you had this baby boy in your arms and you were bouncing him up and down.

            ‘You met my gaze across the room and you smiled like you’d been caught doing something naughty. You know how much I love that face. And you held him closer and kissed his head, and you kept looking at me, like you wanted me to share him. Like he astounded you, and made you happy, and you’d been searching the crowd for me because you wanted to share that.

            ‘And I realised what an idiot I was being. And how good it could be, and how I wanted to see you holding our kid. How I wanted to spend our lives sharing looks like that.’

            Steve tugged at his hair, and when Tony looked up his lips were caught in a sweet kiss. By the time Steve let him go, they were both breathing a little heavily, their lips swollen.

            ‘I love you so much it still knocks me off my feet sometimes, Tony Stark-Rogers.’ Steve hummed, low and content, and pulled Tony back down to his chest, settling him into one of their favourite tried-and-tested napping positions. ‘Do you remember the day we met them?’

            Tony nodded and closed his eyes. ‘I knew the second they brought them in. They were ours. I never understood what you meant, when you said that your brothers and sister were just always yours, and waiting for you. And then I met the twins.’

            ‘Quicksilver and magic,’ Steve agreed, his voice warmed with sleepiness. ‘I watched you fall in love with them, and fell in love with you all over again.’

            More guests arrived, downstairs. Phil and Hawk, their hands in each other’s back pockets and likely to stay that way, bringing red, white and blue silly string. Jane, four months pregnant and looking queasy, and Thor, who had taken up whispering for fear of deafening the baby and had to be physically restrained from carrying his wife everywhere.

            Loki and Tasha, each with an exquisitely beautiful date they promptly ignored in favour of sitting in a corner and getting blitzed on vodka and catching up. Bruce and his wife Betty, beautiful, serene and as much a force to be reckoned with as Peggy had ever been, arrived late but brought massive quantities of store-bought ice-cream cake as neither of them could cook worth a damn.

            As each of them arrived, Peter explained that the birthday boy was asleep with Tony, and that they’d come down once they’d rested a little.

            There were children, and music, and screaming. Toasts to those who had left them, who would never come back, and hands laid on Jane’s baby to feel where little Margaret would kick, in a few weeks’ time.

            There would be fireworks. They’d wake Steve up, and he would kiss Tony awake, take him into their bedroom where they would stand by the window and make love watching the sky explode into colour.

            They would go back to their family, and hold their sleeping children, one of Tony’s arms around Peter’s shoulders as they all ate, and sang, and finally fell asleep with people on every surface in the house.

            But for now, they just slept in each other’s arms. They slept, and dreamt of spiders and quicksilver and magic, of flying iron men and shields caught in the ice.

            And knew that this was how it was always supposed to end.


End file.
